Strange Bedfellows
by Selective scifi junkie
Summary: Two crews on opposite sides of a battle are still alive when the shooting stops, bloodied and stranded together. Apart, they will die. Together, perhaps there is a way to survive. Slots in to Serenity (film). Full description inside.
1. Chapter 1: Mal

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 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Summary: Two crews on opposite sides of a battle, bloodied and stranded together. Apart, they will die. Together, perhaps there is a way to survive.**

 **Assumptions: We see Serenity's crew surrendering to Feds just before the Operative calls them off. At that point, Zoe is injured, Jayne is badly injured, Mal and Simon will die from their wounds in a matter of hours unless they get surgery. The next shots we see of them, all the crew (apart from Simon, who is only crutched) are walking soundly and do not seem to be in pain when they move. Time has obviously elapsed. This is my attempt to map that time.**

 **Genre: Sci-fi/Western. It's Firefly. What else could I ever tag it as?**

 **Rating: I'm calling it a T. There is no explicit sexual content, but I spend quite a lot of time on injuries. Some of it is rather gruesome. If you can handle the episode 'Bushwhacked' you'll be fine.**

 **Note on vocab: I am providing a glossary for both the Chinese and any medical jargon. You should not need either to understand what's going on. They are there purely for curiosity's sake.**

 **Mal**

Mal saw the guns go down, he saw the Feds back away, retreating through the door as they slipped on the blood and tripped over the broken bodies, away from the girl standing like the Angel of Death, blood dripping from her hands. They'd gone; they'd left them there. The Operative must have ordered them off. Maybe he could feel something still, maybe he'd felt something when he'd watched the Reavers tearing that woman to pieces. Mal felt like he was about to fall down, every movement hurt like Niska's torture; he needed a medic, but Simon was down and bleeding.

"'Nara, adrenaline!" At the sound of Simon's voice, River came running back. She wasn't hurt. _Gorram_ girl had stood on the corpses of thirty Reavers if it had been but one and she didn't seem hurt in the slightest. One _gorram_ Alliance man had given him a hell of a beating, and that girl got out shiny. Inara passed Simon something; Simon gasped in pain, sat half way up and jabbed it in to his leg. Mal looked around at what was left of his crew. River and Inara looked okay, Jayne and Zoe were panting and bloody. _Wo de tian ah,_ Kaylee looked bad, but Simon was at least moving now. Maybe he'd be more than useless now. Mal could feel himself swaying. He could hardly stand, and he couldn't bear the pain much longer. He didn't have it together enough to speak, to call for help. Couldn't the girl read minds? Simon had dragged himself to his hands and knees and was sticking a needle in Kaylee's neck, talking to himself. "Looks like M6, I hope it's just M6. Inara, rub that in. If she stops blinking or isn't significantly better inside of three minutes, yell. Zoe, still just… Yeah, Cat 3." He staggered across to Jayne. "Let me see." He half knelt half fell down in front of Jayne. "You were lucky; missed the artery, Cat 2. Let me check that-" Mal's legs gave out. River appeared right under him, taking his weight and lowering him to the ground as best she could.

"Simon," she said. Mal couldn't see Simon to tell if he'd heard. "Through wound, right superior abdomen. Shock. Cat 1."

" _Gou shi._ " Simon started scrambling round towards them. He ran his hand over Mal's back, feeling for the hole. Mal twitched as he found it. " _Lao tien ye,_ root of…" He tapped Mal's stomach sharply with his free hand, cursed, then reached for his neck and felt his pulse. "That's gotta be over 200. We need to get him to surgery, now. Help me." Inara appeared at the edge of Mal's field of vision, still looking composed, _gui xiao de_ how. River had him by the other arm. Kaylee appeared too, standing. "Oh thank God, was just M6."

"Shot wound, left mid abdomen." River said quietly. "Early shock, Cat 1. But there's nobody to help him."

* * *

 _Wo de tian, a_ a fairly mild curse

 _Gou shi_ a fairly strong curse

 _Lao tien ye_ similar in this context

 _gui xiao de_ hell knows (this is very dodgy Chinese)

 **Mesentery:** a fine membrane from which the intestines are suspended, which contains a lot of fairly major blood vessels

 **This fic is completed, you may reasonably expect updates two to three times per week, my schedule is getting 'interesting' (by Wash's definition).**

 **Please review**


	2. Chapter 2: Kaylee

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 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Kaylee**

The Captain sure was heavy when he was blacked out, too heavy for Kaylee and River to lift. With Inara's help, they got him up, just barely. At least Kaylee could feel her legs again, and they did what she told them. She didn't know what the Reavers had shot her with, she didn't know what Simon had given her, but it seemed he'd saved her life, again.

"River, are there Reavers left alive?" Zoe had got herself up.

"They're far away."

"Can we get to _Serenity,_ or what's left of her?" Part of Kaylee didn't want to know how bad. _Serenity,_ her _Serenity._ She'd known landing she'd be hurting bad by the time they stopped, she'd heard metal tearing, she'd heard the ship scream. There was already plenty of damage to the outer hull from where they'd torn her in order to disguise the ship, but that was nothing compared to what the crash had done to her.

"They're far away; they won't come for us. Lots of bodies between them and us," River said

"Good. Jayne, get up." Zoe took River's share of the Captain's weight. River went right back for Simon and pulled him to his feet. He was covered in blood. He was hurt, but he'd be alright. He was good at fixing people like she was good at machines. He'd be alright. He had to be. "Let's move."

They started picking their way over the dead Reavers. Kaylee found herself snatching her feet away. They hardly looked any different dead, just still. She couldn't quite believe they wouldn't hurt her.

"All gone now," River said from just ahead of her, she was half propping Simon up. "All dead. All quiet."

"What?" Simon said.

"Wasn't talking to you," River said, not looking back. Kaylee stepped up to Simon's other side.

"He's big for you to take on your own, sweetie." She pulled Simon's free arm around her shoulders.

"Thanks," Simon breathed.

" _Cura te ipsum,_ " River said to the ground. That wasn't English, and if it was Mandarin, it was Mandarin Kaylee didn't know. Simon's blood was creeping down River's side. Would he actually be able to do anything for the Captain? He looked nearly as bad himself.

"Kaylee, power," Zoe said, as soon as they set foot on _Serenity._ She was cold and dark, like she was dead inside. "Hang the rest for now, Doc needs power." Kaylee pulled away from Simon and ran into the dark. She could fix this; she had to fix it. She had no other choice.

 **I'd like to take this opportunity to commend Gamera Obscura, my sole beta for this enormity of a fic. Gamera has meticulously gone over every inch of my grammar and found something I've been consistently doing wrong for years, painstakingly corrected every incident of it, then did it again because I didn't believe him and undid it all the first time. After three weeks and three rounds of beta-ing, it still feels and sounds like my prose, but it's tidier, better balanced and more comprehensible.  
Gamera Obscura is currently writing a saga of ficlets which will eventually span the entire Firefly canon and quite a lot of other stuff. You know it's good fanfic when, when thinking about the canon, you find Gamera's ideas sneaking in dressed up as Whedon's ideas.**


	3. Chapter 3: Mal

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 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Mal**

Everything felt strange. It was light; he was lying down on his back. His guts hurt, but the pain felt far away.

"Willing to try, Doc. Just tell me what to do." That was Zoe's voice.

"I appreciate the offer, Zoe, but this isn't a flesh wound. It's penetrating abdominal trauma. If the bleeding doesn't kill me, infection will." Now Simon. Mal opened his eyes.

"Simon." River's voice. A bright light stabbed at his right eye, then his left.

"Back with us Captain?" He could see now.

"Seems so. Good job, Doc."

"It's far from over. The thing that ran you through managed to miss every organ in its way, but it tore an inch wide hole in your mesentery, right through one of the arteries. I patched the bleed, but you'd already lost too much. What was loose in your abdomen I'm putting back in to you, but it won't be able to clot now. You're oozing from a dozen different wounds that ought to close themselves, but you've lost too much blood. Without a blood transfusion, you're going to bleed to death in the next few hours. Does anybody else here know that they're a universal donor?" It had been Wash; they'd used him for that a couple of times. There was a long silence. Simon sighed heavily. "Then there's nothing more I can do for you. I didn't have the foresight to store blood, I should have done; it's standard on Alliance Vessels."

"They're dying." River's voice made Simon and Zoe jump.

"Who?" Simon asked, not looking at her.

"I don't know his name, but he died and now she's crying. She's crying because she can't save them. She feels like she should, but it's too much, she's not ready, she's not strong enough"

"She picks her moments to go moonbrain," Jayne said. "Am I next getting stitched, since you can't do yourself?"

"Give me a minute." Simon sat down on the second bed, one hand hovering over his side, breathing hard. He didn't look good, either. Zoe crouched down in front of him.

"You stay with me, Doc. I've seen men look like you before; if they sleep, they don't wake up again." She took his wrist. "You see how hard I'm pressing to get a pulse there?"

"Tachycardia, tachypnoea, hyperdynamic pulse, sweating and pallor," River said. "Compensated shock." Simon looked up at her. "And they're the same over there."

"Did you get that by looking, or by reading my mind?" River didn't reply. "Zoe, there is nothing I can do about myself."

"No." Kaylee's voice. How long had she been there? "You're not allowed to die."

"Isn't a choice, Kaylee. I'm bleeding out. As things stand, the Captain and I aren't going to last." Mal's dazed, doped-up brain finally caught up with River.

"River, who's 'they'?"

"They're dying. They can't get to them fast enough."

"I get that. Answer me, who are they?"

"Two by Two, Hands of Blue."

"You mean Alliance." A long pause.

"Yes." That had taken an irritatingly long time.

"And they can't get through their injured fast enough."

"They're scared. They know they can't do enough." That sounded like a yes.

"And Alliance will have blood."

"Like they'd help us," Jayne said.

"Zoe, radio." She didn't move. "I'm still the _gorram_ Captain! Radio!" She turned away from Simon and put one in his hand. Only one of his arms seemed to be working, so he set it one handed.

"This is Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the Firefly-class transport _Serenity,_ calling the Captain of the Alliance fleet. I have an offer for you." No reply. His crew were looking at him like he'd gone completely loopy. "This is Captain Malcolm Reynolds of _Serenity_ calling the Captain of the Alliance fleet. I have an offer for you."

"What the hell, Captain Reynolds? You couldn't possibly make my day any worse." A female voice came over the radio, distorted by distance and downed comm relays. "What's your play?"

"It's my understanding that you got a lot of people needing Doctors and not enough Doctors to fix 'em. Now we got a Doctor, but he's bloodied up and he can't fix himself, and he needs things to patch us up that we ain't got. What I'm suggesting is that you send a medic over to us to see to ours, then he goes back with you, he works on your crew until one of us gets off this rock, then we take him back." His crew were still staring at him like he'd gone mad. If the other ships had blood for him and someone who could fix him and Simon, nobody else needed to die today.

"Where the hell did you get that from?"

"Is my intel wrong? You just flew through a Reaver fleet, I'm guessing you need your medics."

"How the hell did you know they hit one of the med bays first?" Mal frowned at River, who didn't respond.

"Never you mind." A brief silence.

"That's it?" The other captain asked. "That's your offer?"

"No, that's not it. I trust you people as far as I can throw your whole ship. The instant you ask for ID, it's over. If our medic, or anyone else on my crew, gets hurt or disappears for more than eight hours at a stretch, I swear we will take every member of our crew who can stand, and that's most of us, walk over to your ship and start shooting. That'll bleed you. You saw how many Reavers we ate through. I don't reckon you wanna be losing any more men today." She didn't reply at once. "You need more medics, I got one, but he needs help first."

"Sir-" Zoe started.

"We ain't got no choice," Kaylee cut her off. "You heard 'em. We don't get help, both of 'em die."

"Captain?" Mal prompted.

"Hold on." There was a long silence. Why didn't she hurry? It was only two _gorram_ lives and however many on her crew Simon could save hanging in the balance. "You've got the Tams, haven't you?" The radio said.

"I ain't discussin' who I have or haven't got. I got a medic who needs a medic himself; if you help him, he'll help you. That's all you need to know." He turned the radio off. "Kaylee, can they get off the ground?" She shook her head.

"No, they're worse smashed up than we are. _Serenity's_ bleeding bad, I could see right out her side to their ship, but they're almost in two pieces down the middle."

"So they can't be abducting anyone."

"No." He turned the radio back on.

"Sorry, technical issues," Mal said. "What was that?" On the other end, the woman sighed.

"I agree to your terms, Captain Reynolds. I don't seem to have a choice, I'm told that the Tams are no longer a threat and that, for a pirate, you're a man of your word. And for what it's worth, if I get out of here with a third of my crew alive, I'll be doing better than I am right now. It's not on my mind to arrest anyone. What should I tell my medic to bring?"

"Doc?"

"For you, either two units whole O negative or a test kit. Then… I've got surgical kit and appropriate pain meds. Just O neg or a test kit and any specific instruments they want for IP trauma." Mal repeated the order.

"That should be possible. Now I just need to find one of the medics who can still stand up. And just to make it clear, if you kill ours, you'll have started the fight, and we'll finish it."

"Sounds fair. Call me when your medic's on his way."

"Over and out."

"I can hear two," River said quietly.

"Two whats?" Zoe asked, as though she was scared of the answer.

"Two medics over there. You can always tell medics when they're working like that, because they always sound the same; Mentation, brain, airway, lungs-"

"Circulation, heart," Simon joined in.

"'Nough of that," Zoe said. "How are we going to make sure you ain't dead before the other medic gets here?" No reply. "Simon!"

"Shock dose fluids. 1.4 litres IV, fast." River said. Simon nodded. "He knows it. Just couldn't say it."

"So we need an IV line," Zoe said. "I can't do those. If I raise and hold for you-"

"Yeah," Simon said. He was about to black out, by the look of him. "River, the catheters are-" Apparently she already knew. She set a box down next to him. Zoe grabbed Simon by the elbow. She was pushing herself forward hard so she didn't have to feel. She had to keep herself in this room with work to do, else she'd lay down and die, like she'd said Simon would. When Simon cussed a minute later, she told him:

"And you keep trying." With steel in her voice. Mal closed his eyes again. Doped as he was, he still hurt like hell.

"There you go; now what?" Zoe was still talking.

"Fluids, that cupboard there, and an extension line, there." This could still all blow up. The word of the Alliance didn't mean a _gorram_ thing. They might still just decide to kill the lot of them.

"Zoe." It was hard work to talk.

"Sir?"

"If the medic… make sure you shoot first."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

 **Mesentery:** a fine membrane from which the intestines are suspended, which contains a lot of fairly major blood vessels

 **Tachypnoea:** Rapid breathing

 **Tachycardia:** Rapid heart beat

 **Hyperdynamic pulse:** A term for a pulse which is palpable, but falls away unusually quickly, usually indicating significant blood loss.

 **IP:** In this context, intraperitoneal; within the abdominal cavity

 **Shock dose:** A way of giving fluids which aims to bring the patient out of shock


	4. Chapter 4: Simon

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 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Simon**

Simon pressed his fingers in to his wrist. Still a hyperdynamic pulse, he looked up at the clock he kept in here. 27 in fifteen seconds, so 108 per minute. At least it had stopped getting worse; maybe that was due to decreased pain. He had loaded himself with Buprenorphine. He hadn't been able to stand it on half dose any longer. The Captain's radio crackled.

"Captain Reynolds, we're sending a medic to you now." Simon sighed with relief.

"I'll send one of my crew to go meet him." He lowered the radio. "Inara, go find him, I doubt they'll shoot you. River, make yourself scarce. Kaylee, pick a place and start fixing my ship. Doc, don't tell them your real name. " Inara and Kaylee left, and River followed, muttering to herself.

"So she melted. Melted away. But they won't hurt us. They're bleeding too bad to care." Simon only hoped she was right. He couldn't see a good outcome to this; he bled to death, he died of infection or the Alliance helped him, then identified and arrested him, then probably killed him before trial, if St Lucy's was anything to go by. River might make it out, but he'd be very, very lucky to.

Movement outside. Simon lifted his head slightly, Zoe and Jayne were raising guns.

"It's us," Inara called. "It's okay." Zoe lowered the gun and got up as the medic, a small, Chinese-looking woman with short hair, bloodshot eyes and blood splattered on one side of her face, came in.

"Hands up," Zoe said. "I wanna be sure you ain't armed." She complied, eyes wide with fear.

"I've been ordered to do this so we get use of your medic. Why would I come armed?" Zoe took and opened the medic's bag.

"Blood, a sealed box that rattles, two glass bottles; no guns." She put the bag back in the medic's hands. The medic set it down and looked at the Captain.

"So he's the transfusion?" Simon shook his head.

"Do your own triage; check I'm not too far wrong. I'm not fully confident in my own abilities right now." She nodded.

"Doctor Xiaoli Keller." Obviously he couldn't tell her the truth

"Doctor Francis-"

"Don't bother. I know who you are. I don't want to hurt you." He doubted she spoke for the whole ship, but he'd almost definitely die if she didn't help him. She bent over Mal, checking pulses. "Is that a-?"

"Through wound. Yes."

"Why a Ford stitch?"

"Quicker. Was afraid I'd pass out before I finished Simple."

"You're a Cat 1 until your volume improves," she said to Mal. "Is that his first shock bolus?"

"Second." She crossed the room to him. She knew enough not to go straight for the blood down his side, she started at his head, then pulses, then chest, the bell of her stethoscope under his shirt.

"Can you try to breathe quiet for a moment?" He could try; he couldn't necessarily do it. "First shock bolus?" He nodded. His head was starting to spin. "What've you had?"

"Adrenaline twice, azithrofloxacin, half dose buprenorphine four and a half hours ago, then nearly full half an hour ago." She sighed, she was breathing quite fast, but no increased effort or evidence of pain, so probably metabolic, or in this case, probably stress.

"Opioids? You're trying to be an active medic and you took opioids?"

"All I've got."

"Okay, I'll reverse them and take you over to a Serinoid." Serinoids. As near a perfect class of painkillers as Simon could imagine; potent and central like opioids, but with almost none of the depressive side effects. And incredibly difficult to get your hands on, they'd been starting to make their way in to general use his last months on Osiris.

"You have Serinoids?"

"Yeah," she said it like it was nothing. "Let me see." She indicated his side, the one covered in blood, then pulled the cloth away. Simon couldn't see, but he saw Keller grit her teeth. "You know where that is?"

"Don't really want to."

"No exit wound."

"I know."

"My Captain said no general anaesthetic, she wants you up and working as fast as possible." Simon grimaced. "I know, it's brutal, she's just trying to keep what's left of her crew alive. My plan was paravertebral nerve blocks, plus or minus sedation." Without GA, that probably was the best option; it wasn't good, not from a pain management point of view. He didn't exactly have a choice. He nodded. She went back for the bag.

"No." Zoe said firmly. "You use our meds." Keller sighed.

"No," Simon said. "She has something we don't. For those, she has to use her own."

"You have locals, right?" He nodded. "Where-" Simon pointed mutely, ignoring the faint ringing in his ears. He was going to pass out in a minute. She drew up her nerve blocks and came back towards him. "Turn around." He braced himself and shifted 'round. It hurt. It really hurt to move now. The serinoids would help. The needle sinking in to his back was almost a pleasant distraction each time. "Can you help me lay him down?" Zoe came over, they settled him on his right side. He felt quite a lot better this way up. He wasn't fighting gravity to oxygenate his brain. "This is the drug you don't have."

"Doc, how will we know if it's bogus?" Zoe asked.

"I'll start screaming," he replied. Keller leaned over him and sunk a load of it in to his drip line, then almost immediately jabbed something else into his quadriceps.

"Reversing the opioid." She said. "I'm gonna leave that to work, check these two, then set the transfusion up." Simon nodded.

"She meet with your approval Doc?" the Captain asked.

"Yeah, she'll do."

"You were good," Keller said from somewhere near Jayne. "Everyone who knew you says it; you were a good surgeon, Doctor Tam, so I'll take that as a compliment." Blood was trickling across his stomach. "You can wait." Keller said to Jayne, then turned to Zoe "Is it just your back?" Zoe nodded.

"And this is all the injured on this ship."

"Yup," the Captain said.

"In a crew of… what, five?" She took the Captain's blood out of the bag.

"We started this with eight," Zoe said. "Now we're seven."

"One dead and four injured in a crew of eight, _wo de ma._ We were a crew of a hundred six hours ago, with four medics and fifty soldiers on top of that. We're still counting the cost, but it's something like sixty dead, eighty various shades of injured, thirty alright. But then again, we lost power." She was really struggling to keep it together. Simon probably would have been, in her place. Having people die on you hurt. Having that many people die on you had to be nearly impossible to bear.

"Oh we lost power," Mal said. "We just got a damn good mechanic."

"What did the damage?" Simon asked. It wouldn't hurt to have some idea of the injuries he was going up against. The blocks and the serinoid seemed to be working, it certainly hurt a lot less, and he felt less faint for lying down.

"Landing did some of it, the worst of it was those… I don't know what they are, those madmen."

"Reavers," Jayne said. "Reavers ain't men." She took a shuddering, angry breath as she reached up to hang the blood. "They ain't good for nothin' but killin'."

"The minute we landed, they were there. They broke in through the holes in the hull, we'd been damaged on the way down by something and they just started killing or… I've never seen anything like it. I know humans can do some pretty horrible things to each other, but-"

"Reavers are a whole different game," the Captain said. "You were on the ship when they hit you?" She nodded. "That'll be why they bled you so bad. Ships are good ground for Reavers, they can run you down, ambush you, come out of engine tracks and vents… The best you can do against Reavers is run, if you can't run, you foxhole; dig yourself in tight, make them come to you, kill them as they come, and leave a round in your weapon for yourself."

"Is that what you did?"

"Yup."

"You all look like fight injuries, not crash, so they obviously did you some damage."

"The crash didn't hurt anyone on this ship."

" _Jian ta-de gui_. Your engine pods are both off. You hit this deck hard."

"You got a good enough pilot, it don't matter. He'll get you in." So the crash hadn't killed Wash. Something else had. "Was Reavers and your people did the damage to us." Keller breathed out hard and turned back to Simon. She jabbed him hard with closed scissors. "That hurt?"

"No. Your block's good."

"Captain, I don't know if I can or should apologise for the actions of my superiors. I just have a lot of people I'm trying to keep alive. I've had a lot of people die in front of me today, but I have never intentionally harmed or killed anyone. Is there water?"

"There was." Simon replied. Footsteps at the door. Mal was sort of blocking his view.

"Two things." Kaylee's voice. "We'll have water properly inside five minutes and-" Her voice cracked. "And I went up to the bridge looking for Lawson piping, there used to be some in there." Zoe closed her eyes. Was that where Wash had died? Probably.

"Kaylee-" Mal started.

"The Reavers left him. They didn't maul him up; he's in one piece." She sobbed once. "I'm sorry. I'll get you water." Then she ran off again. Zoe had turned away, and Mal was looking at her. No one said anything for a long moment.

"I'm going to scrub," Keller said. "This is going to get messy. Swabs?"

"Steriles there, non-steriles, there."

"I am going to give you the second shock bolus; I think you need it." He wasn't going to argue with her.

Having a numb site scrubbed felt very strange indeed. Simon was opting not to look, probably the less he knew about exactly how bad the damage to his abdomen was, the happier he'd be.

"How many medics have you got? Fully manned Alliance cruiser should be three? Four?"

"Depends on the mission. We were four. Were. Those things came crashing straight in to the primary med bay, tore Doctor Espenson apart, and three of the nurses. They had some sort of paralysis darts-"

"It's M6, or at least the ones that they shot at us were. Respond well to Calephar."

" _Gou shi,_ I need to call back with that right now." She dropped the swab she was using to clean his side up and snatched the radio from the Captain's hand. "Keller to Bridge, please respond." Simon wasn't sure if he blacked out or not, either way he wasn't listening. He wasn't very aware of much until Keller came back and started scrubbing his side again. "Hard to scrub a site that's still bleeding. I can only open glove, I'm afraid, not ideal for digging around in abdomens." She got up and moved away.

"If it's what we've got, it's what we've got. Let's just add Isoprovaline to meds." It would make the whole area hurt more, but if he stood even a slim chance of actually surviving this, it was worth it. He heard the tap turn on.

"Wow, okay, there's running water, albeit cold."

"She's a good mechanic," the Captain said. "She says she'll fix something, she'll fix it."

"The girl who came in crying?"

"That's her. And you can tell your folks she ain't got no warrant on her."

"Do you really think that matters to us right now? More than half our crew is dead or dying, I've left medical charge to a boy who's been out of school for three months in the hope that I can get your medic on his feet. I couldn't give a damn who does or doesn't have a warrant. Right now all I care about is whether or not you're a medic, and how long I can leave you before you'll die." Her voice cracked and she fell silent.

"So three medics, counting you."

"Three medics counting both of us. Teng, our most experienced medic, he was the one that got hit by the paralysis darts. He can't help us." The tap stopped. This did not sound good. The medic who wasn't in this room was a new grad, Keller seemed competent, but she didn't have the ease of someone who'd been doing it for ten years, she didn't look old enough either. This wasn't just going to be three medics for sixty wounded, this was going to be three fairly green medics – one of them very green indeed - for sixty wounded. Sixty-four wounded if you counted _Serenity's_ burden. He'd never dealt with more than five wounded at a time outside a proper hospital, that had been the gun fight in the brothel, Heart of Gold. The tap turned off again. He could hear her clattering about for kit.

"Paramedical staff? Nurses?"

"Again, running at about half numbers. How many years have you worked?"

"As a full time trauma surgeon, five. Work's been sporadic for the past year."

"And that's your gig." She threw a drape over his side

"Yeah."

"Mine too." She appeared beside him, gloved and masked. Here it came, and it was going to hurt. "You ready for this?"

"I have no idea."

"Right, let's go bullet-hunting."

Despite all the drugs, it did hurt. Even serenoids didn't block the pain out completely; it had had too long to get its momentum going, pre-emptive analgesia was just not possible with trauma. He could tell she was putting thought in to her tissue handling, but it was still painful to have somebody digging down through your guts. It felt like it went on for quite a few minutes, then:

"There you go. It looks whole." Something small and bloody dropped a few inches in front of his nose. "Want to keep it?" His eyes came in to focus. A spent bullet.

"No."

"Right then, stitch up. It was hiding behind the spleen; lots of blood in here. I don't think it's through stomach wall, but-" That wasn't reassuring.

"Always assume GI is through. Missing it is fatal."

"I know. Can you hold your breath for a second, your diaphragm is shoving your spleen." He filled his lungs and held. It was far from over. Getting the bullet out was usually the easy bit. He could still very easily die on the table. He couldn't feel the needle as such, but he could feel Keller pulling at him, and that hurt. She told him when he could breathe, then eventually "Okay, ligament done. That'll hold. Breathe normally." He let his last breath go and gasped. "You look a better colour now." Well that was something. "Gonna be cold." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw saline flush in her hand. She hadn't warmed it; it was very cold.

"Is it weird having someone dig around in your guts while you're awake?" Jayne asked.

"Very."

"I'm sorry," Keller said. "I know it's undignified-"

"We've dealt with worse than undignified today."

"It isn't through, you know. I'm trying to get my forceps through the stomach wall, there's a solid submucosa in my way. The muscle's a fine mess, but it isn't through. I'm guessing you know what that does for your odds." Simon nodded. He ought to survive. He wouldn't go septic. The bullet was out, there was no infective source. As long as he didn't spring a bleed, he ought to survive. Or at least make it in to the hands of the Alliance justice system alive.

"You're sure it's not through anywhere else?"

"Yes, I'm sure. You'll survive this."

"As long as your stitches hold."

"Hey, I'm a Sihnon surgeon. My stitches hold, Osiris boy." Simon smiled briefly. Even out in Blue Sun after a Reaver attack it was worth goading surgeons from other schools.

"Sorry, which school has a twelve hour traumatic amputation window?"

"Sorry, which school has interns doing fourth generation bypass surgeries with nobody else scrubbed in?"

"Wasn't us that made the Dewy mistake."

"Hey, that was Londinium. Wasn't us."

"It had Londinium and Sihnon on the header, and you both got hit in the lawsuit, which, by the way, also came from Osiris."

"I wonder if we do general anaesthesia just to get surgeons some peace and quiet." There was a moment's silence.

"Your medic with the flesh wounds," Simon started. "is there any chance of getting him on his feet?"

"None. There are huge chunks of flesh missing, we can see most of his right arm bones."

"And he's still alive?" Jayne asked.

"Only just. Why would anyone do something like that?" Keller's voice was starting to waver.

"He got et." Jayne said flatly. "'S what Reavers do if they catch you, eat you alive 'n wear your skin." There was a long pause.

"How did the Core not know?" Keller said sharply. Simon felt a harder pull and flinched. "How did the Rim know about this and not the Core?"

"The Core knew, alright." The Captain said. "Just spent a lot of time pretendin' they didn't. Did you see the broadcast that went out?"

"When?"

"Probably a half hour after we landed."

"Then no. I was backed in to a corner with the other Doctor who's still standing with eight soldiers in front of us, hoping I wasn't about to die." Her voice was breaking much more obviously by the end of the sentence.

"When you got a minute, go watch it. Explains a lot. You all were sent here to prevent the signal from getting out." Keller didn't reply.

"There might be surgeons who'd omentalise that, I'm not going to," she said to Simon.

"Partial thickness stomach. It shouldn't need it."

"So now we're on to closure."

"Well done." He had no idea of the sort of job she'd done, but what could he do about it? He couldn't do abdominal repair on himself. He just had to trust her.

* * *

 **As always, please review**

 _Gou shi_ a fairly strong curse

 _Jian ta-de gui_ like hell (as in 'I don't believe you')

 **Hyperdynamic pulse:** A term for a pulse which is palpable, but falls away unusually quickly, usually indicating significant blood loss.

 **Buprenorphine:** A weaker form of morphine

 **Shock bolus:** A way of giving fluids which aims to bring the patient out of shock

 **Azithromicin:** A fictional antibiotic

 **Opioids:** A real class of painkillers including morphine; effective, but can make patients quite spaced out (think Kaylee in the deleted scene from the pilot)

 **Serinoids:** A fictional class of painkillers.

 **GA:** General anaesthetic

 **Quadriceps:** The muscle on the front of the thigh, a nice target for getting injections in to.

 **GI:** Gastrointestinal. Medic-speak for guts.

 **Calephar:** A fictional antidote to the (I think) neurotoxic darts used by the Reavers

 **Submucosa:** The second-innermost layer of the stomach, and the strongest layer.

 **Omentalise:** Sew an abdominal membrane (the omentum) over a wound in an abdominal organ to encourage it to heal faster.


	5. Chapter 5: Mal

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Mal**

The other Doctor closed Simon up pretty quick once she'd finished digging around inside him, left him lying while she gave more painkillers to Jayne and Zoe. Mal wasn't getting so much attention now, he did feel less like he was about to drop off dead. Simon must have called it right with the blood; he also looked less like he was about to die. He'd be the first to admit it, he didn't like asking the Alliance for help, but sometimes, like when Shepherd Book took a bullet to his chest on Jianying, you don't have a choice.

"You gonna dig this darn thing out of me already, woman?" Jayne asked, glancing at his shoulder.

"Yes. Arguably, I shouldn't, since there are people in far more desperate need on my ship, but since I'm here and I'm taking your medic, I will. Tam, can you get up?"

"Don't know." Simon shifted and started to sit himself up.

"You see to her, I'll see to him? Change yourself to twice maintenance, you're not in shock any more." Simon grabbed himself by the wrist and smiled.

"Seems I'm not." He got to his feet and didn't fall down. He looked a mite surprised by that. "Zoe, probably the best way to do this is for you to kneel down against something. Unfortunately one bed is occupied, the other one is pretty covered in blood." Zoe didn't answer, just turned her back to him and knelt down, head pressed in to the cupboard door. It was starting to hit her. She'd been a time bomb ever since it had happened, now she was starting to go off. He wouldn't see her cry, but cry she would. It'd just take her longer than it had taken Kaylee to start. On the other side of the room, Jayne barked in pain.

"Whatever you gave me for pain aint workin'."

"This isn't an area you can numb out the way I did Doctor Tam's side, and we're reserving serenoids for medics. Believe me, it would be worse without the meds."

"Can we lose this, Zoe?" Simon said softly, tugging on her jacket, the way he spoke River when she was bad. Zoe wouldn't appreciate that; no matter what, you spoke to her like a grown up, and she'd like you better for it. She didn't appreciate being coddled. But maybe right now she didn't care. She shed the coat like he'd asked her.

They went on in near silence, apart from the Alliance medic occasionally asking Simon where something was; Simon trimmed Zoe's wound up and stitched it neat, while the Alliance Doctor patched the hole in Jayne's shoulder, and got growled at for her trouble. When Simon got up to wash his hands, Zoe just stayed, shoulders tight and shaking. It'd be hard for her now; she was going to grieve something fierce.

"That's it; I'm done with you." The Alliance medic said, stepping back from Jayne. "You can get up; you can walk, but you don't work that arm, understand?"

"Who gave you the right to tell me what to do?"

"Doctor's orders are…" Simon started, "not well-recognised on this ship. But if you pull those stitches out, it'll probably be days before I can re-do them. Zoe, similar. You can get up and move; if it hurts, stop."

"Hear you," she said quietly.

"Captain, don't you dare get up for longer than it takes to go to the bathroom."

"Gotcha."

"I'm not sure that you do. If the internal stitches give, you will die in about three hours."

"Can I use your radio?" The Alliance medic asked, picking it up again. Entitled minx.

"If you need it." She turned it on.

"This is Doctor Keller calling from _Serenity_. Captain, please respond."

"Give me good news, Doctor Keller."

" _Serenity's_ medic is out of shock. He's now down to a Cat 3; he's on his feet and working."

"Oh thank God. Get him back over here, ASAP."

"Hey." Mal tapped her. "Just you tell your Captain to remember what happens if you hurt him." Keller sighed heavily.

"Affirmative Ma'am. Captain Reynolds wishes to remind you what will happen if we hurt his medic."

"Please tell Captain Reynolds that I remember, that he's paranoid, and that I have no intention of hurting his medic."

"It's not paranoia if they're really trying to kill you," Mal said. The medic ignored him and turned to Simon.

"Can you walk?"

"Think so."

"Good. Now you hold up your end of the deal," she said. Mal didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit, but she had probably just saved his life.

* * *

 **Serinoids:** A fictional class of painkillers.

 **I feel I should add at this point that my beta, Gamera Obscura (the one with the long series of ficlets - number 45 is amazing), came up with the name for this fic. The reason(s) he felt it to be appropriate will become clearer later on.**


	6. Chapter 6: Kaylee

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Kaylee**

Kaylee ran her hand over _Serenity's_ features. Even with power up, she felt cold. She was usually a warm ship. She'd found two major foulwater leaks, patched them up like the poor girl was bleeding. She was hurt as bad as any of them. Simon had folks to fix, and she had _Serenity._ She'd miss Wash bad, but not as much as Zoe would. Wash had been a gentle touch with her, now he was gone. Nobody deserved to die like that, he'd just saved all their lives, then the Reavers- tears sprang in the corners of Kaylee's eyes again. That didn't help no one. She had plenty to do, just had to figure where to start. Voices close by.

"How did you know?" A woman she didn't know. The Alliance Doctor?

"I didn't know. I guessed. I treated what I could treat and hoped." That was Simon. So he was up and walking. Without deciding to, she was walking towards them.

"We've had a few asphyxiate under it, others bleed to death from wounds they couldn't fight." It was Simon and the other Doctor. Simon looked an awful lot better, he wasn't so white and he wasn't breathing so hard, but he was covered in blood, most of it 'round his middle, not on his hands, so it was probably his own. That looked like a lot to lose.

"Kaylee." He caught sight of her. She took a step towards him, then stopped. They both had work to do right now. "The news is good. The Captain and I aren't likely to die now."

"Good," she said curtly. "We seen enough of death for a while." She turned to the other Doctor. "The Captain meant what he said: he'll kill and die to protect his own. Just you bring him back in one piece." The other Doctor shook her head.

"If you'd seen what we're going back into, you wouldn't think I'd dream of killing a medic." Kaylee nodded.

"I'll see you." She started walking away. She had to get the communications array up. If anyone else was going to turn up, better they had warning. This felt so dangerous. He had a great big warrant on his head; sending him onto an Alliance ship felt like a very stupid thing to do. They didn't need to lose anyone else.

"This is one defensive ship." The other Doctor said as she went. Well, they'd learned.

 **Reviews welcome.**

 **What is still likely to go wrong?**


	7. Chapter 7: Simon

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Simon**

The Alliance ship was massive, probably eight to ten times the size of Serenity at least, and almost broken in half. Even a hundred yards out, Simon could smell the blood, bodies littered the ground, some of them Reavers, some of them uniformed and torn apart. Someone, somewhere was screaming: drawn, repeated screams, only pausing for breath.

"Those two little letters in front of your name really do change everything, don't they?" Keller asked. Simon nodded. Not because they wanted them to, but because they had to. They had to help, wherever and whenever they could. No matter how scared, no matter how tired, no matter how this was going to end, you were a Doctor first. There was still a guard at the ship's door, never mind that the ship was gaping open in the middle, never mind that the guard was sitting down, one leg obviously broken. "Leave it," Keller said. The guard lowered his weapon.

"This the outlaw medic?" He sounded like he was in pain.

"Yep. Now we got him, we might have the manpower to do something about you."

"That'd be good."

There was blood splattered and smeared across almost every surface inside the ship, dead Reavers were still lying on the floor. The screams grew closer.

"We were praying for another medic, you know," Keller said. "That somehow we might get help dealing with all this. You weren't what we expected." They rounded a corner. Men and women lay or sat along the floor on both sides of the corridor, some silent, some groaning, that one man screaming every breath. Crush injuries, misaligned limbs that had to be broken, great open lacerations, other ones that were just still and quiet… Where was he supposed to look first?

"Is any prioritisation done?"

"Minear!" Keller bellowed. A nurse looked up from a man who was curled up on his side, panting. "I got you a surgeon."

"Oh, thank God."

"Show him a couple of critical patients and get a theatre crew together." Keller ordered. She turned to Simon. "We can't save everyone; I know that. But we can try." Simon nodded once. At some point, his side was going to start hurting again. Eventually, his injuries would catch up with him. But not yet. For now he was okay.

He had work to do.

* * *

 **As ever, please review**


	8. Chapter 8: Mal

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Mal**

Mal stuck his head out of the infirmary door. He couldn't see anyone, and he'd had enough of laying still. He needed to take a look around _Serenity,_ see for himself how bad she was. Kaylee'd told him some, but it wasn't the same.

"Eight eights are sixty-four.  
"Multiply by seven." Someone was there though, out in the corridor, chanting. A woman, so not Simon; he could probably get away with this.  
"When it's done,  
"Carry one  
"And take away eleven." It was coming from the direction of the stairs to the aft deck.  
"Nine nines are eighty-one  
"Multiply by three," River. Who the hell else would be sitting half way up the stairs, right in his way, reciting rhyming arithmetic?  
"If it's more  
"Carry four  
"And then it's time – Simon was telling the truth. If that stitch breaks, you'll bleed out."

"He ain't here." Mal lowered himself to the floor at the bottom of the stairs, grimacing in pain. "He ain't my Captain and he ain't my mother." River smiled fleetingly.

" _Serenity's_ bad, the Alliance ship is worse, Kaylee thinks we'll fly again."

"You ask her?"

"No. I heard it."

"Inside her head?" River nodded and looked to her left.

"They're still screaming."

"Reavers?" She shook her head.

"The Reavers are all dead. Alliance got better at killing them."

"So…"

"There's screaming here, not aloud, but it's there." By which she probably meant Zoe, Kaylee'd be pretty beat up too, unlikely she'd ever fired a gun in earnest before today, Inara, too, despite her deviously hidden laser pistol. Even though Simon had taken up arms on Niska's Skyplex, if Book had been any judge, he'd not been any use with them. River nodded. "They'd never meant to kill before, none of them." That was just plain unsettling.

"Ain't you gonna go to bed, Little Albatross?" River shook her head and raised a hand to it as though it hurt her.

"They're too loud. Here and there."

"How much do you know about what's going onboard that ship?" River shrugged.

"I can hear Simon."

"He okay?"

"He's tired, he's frustrated, he hurts, but he's working. He can't think too much. He's cutting someone who's probably already too far gone to save, and he knows it."

"Anyone there planning on hurting us?"

"The one who came didn't think so. She thought they need a medic so bad it doesn't matter. And she knew his name."

"But you're not sure."

"A lot of them are screaming too loud to know what they think. Lots of brains, lots of voices. Too loud to hear. Eight eights are sixty-four  
"Multiplied by seven  
"If it's more  
"Carry four-"

"Does that help?" She nodded.

"Some. Drowns some of it out." She looked down. "Hands of Blue hurts; one of them died. One by One." She looked back at him. "Give me work to do. I won't sleep, give me work to do."

"Think you're already doing it, Little Albatross. You're watching, getting us things we need to know, you'll give us warning if things turn bad." He got to his feet unsteadily. His guts still really hurt.

"You'll die if you pull that stitch." River repeated. Having a mind reader might be useful, but there were moments he really didn't care for it. She wasn't going to let him climb the stairs, and given what he'd seen her do today, especially in his condition, he didn't dare to fight with her.

* * *

 **Does anybody recognise what River is reciting?**


	9. Chapter 9: Simon

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Simon**

Simon paced the wards – corridors, they only had ward space for ten; they were spilling out in to the surrounding corridors – of the Alliance ship, looking at charts, feeling pulses, casting his eyes over wounds he usually wouldn't have dared to ignore. He had about ten minutes to pick another patient for surgery. Suffice it to say, he had an abundance of options. They were still dying at quite a rate, last cycle he'd come round to pick up one he'd said he'd treat next and found him dead. This felt horribly like choosing who lived and who died. There were a lot of awful flesh wounds that wanted debriding and closing up, or tidying up if you couldn't close them, but they were coming second to the stab wounds and the blunt traumas. He needed to find someone who was bleeding to death. There probably still were some, and whatever he decided, he needed to do it fast. A lot of these cases didn't have time for him to dither.

Simon had been on a Friday night shift once when a drunkard had sent a hovercar headlong in to a flying bus at high speed. Six DOAs, ten Cat 1s, eighteen Cat 2s, twenty-seven Cat 3s. That had been bad enough, but there had been six anaesthesiologists and five surgeons (none of them nursing gunshot wounds) and uncounted parameds, nurses and interns to handle that, and he hadn't been the most senior surgeon on that night. Properly equipped and properly staffed, they'd only lost one apart from the DOAs. And he'd been able to walk away. At seven the next morning, physically and mentally exhausted, he'd been able to hand over, head for home and sleep it off, knowing he had twelve hours before he started again.

Eventually, he settled on an impact injury: two broken limbs, which he'd just splint for now, and something painful going on in her superior left abdomen. She seemed to have an active bleed. In prep, the nursing crew took over and handed the previous patient he'd chosen over to his anaesthetic nurse, Ortiz. Twelve nurses, three medics, a third of them asleep at any one time. All three medics principally doing surgery, each with three nurses attached to them: one to manage the anaesthetic in theatre, one scrub nurse (he'd forgotten quite how useful they were; he'd been on his own for far too long), one to recover and prep patients, and help out on 'wards' if need be. That was the plan, anyway. In practice, patients were often under-attended in prep because the ward nurses desperately needed help. An outfit trying to do this much should have had a Doctor and twice as many nurses on the wards. They were all tired. And they were rushing. For all Simon's attempts at due diligence, he found himself not checking ligatures properly, not being quite sure of his sutures because he knew there was somebody else trying to die when he wasn't looking.

oooo

They lost that patient, Fairman, on the table. That was one of the situations in which Simon Tam felt it was appropriate to swear.

oooo

Eight hours later, and fighting the urge to hold his stitches, Simon made his way back on to _Serenity_. He just wanted to go to bed, but he should probably do something about the state he'd left his own infirmary in first. He crept down the stairs, trying not to pull at his side, expecting to see pools of clotted and drying blood all over the floor. But the floor was white, Mal was gone, both beds were clean, and the bloody handprints on all the surfaces had been wiped away. He heard movement behind him and turned. River was standing there.

"River, who– who cleaned that up?"

"It's the Augean stables."

" _Mei mei,_ I don't have the energy for games right now."

"It isn't hard, I promise."

"Well, I'm guessing you did it. Anyone else, you'd just have told me." River scowled.

"Not fair. Work it out properly." Simon sighed.

"Okay. Well, Augean sounds Greek, so it's something to do with some Greek stables, and something to do with you, and something to do with… cleaning things, I expect." It took him a moment. "Labour of Hercules. He had to clean the Augean stables in one day-"

"By?"

"By diverting a River. Thank you."

* * *

 _mei mei:_ Sister

 **Prep** : A room next to an operating theatre in which patients are knocked out, brought round and things made sterile enough for surgery

 **These chapters are very inconsistent in length, I know. Changes in narrator just seem a logical place to break the narrative up. This chapter was originally significantly longer, what was removed was excessively medical and didn't advance the plot, so now this chapter is also uncomfortably short.**


	10. Chapter 10: Kaylee

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Kaylee**

Kaylee ran a hand over the joint she'd just welded down again; it was cooling quickly and setting true.

"Good girl," she cooed. "That's better, hey?" The Captain had told her to leave the big structural stuff until they had more hands able. Zoe and Jayne weren't meant to be doing heavy work, the Captain wasn't even supposed to stand up for long. She, River and Inara were fine, and Simon was still on the Alliance ship. Every time Kaylee laid eyes on River, the girl told her the Feds wouldn't hurt him; they needed him too bad.

She was making headway, slow headway, but still. They had power, they had water, if she was lucky, they'd have heat exchange before dark. She'd need help dragging the bit that had fallen off up here though. She stood up. There were two Alliance folks trying to do something in the gap between their two ships. Sun panel, from the look of it. Were they fighting for power? Kaylee scrambled down the knotted rope that was hanging down Serenity's side and set off at a jog towards them. There were dead bodies scattered along the ground, but they weren't stinking yet; it wasn't a warm moon.

"You rigging that for power?" she asked.

"What does it look like?" one said. "The medics need power to do their work, and our engine isn't running."

"You don't have to ask the engine for much to get power, not on _Serenity_ anyways."

" _Serenity?_ " She nodded towards the ship.

"That piece of _luh-suh_ has its engine running?" The other one said.

"Not at full tilt; she's hurt too bad. But she ain't _luh-suh._ She's got power and water going. Looks like you're still trying to do the same." And your fancy hunk of metal is struggling. "What you tryin'a do here?"

"Get this thing set up, so when our core blows out we don't go dark." Kaylee crouched behind the panel and started playing with the leads. It looked easy enough.

"So don't it make more sense to fix the power core so she don't blow?" They didn't answer for a moment. The panel bleeped and a green light lit up on its side. "Well don't it?"

"Have you got any training at all, _xiaojie?_ "

"I learned by doing. Managed to keep her in the sky." She nodded at _Serenity._ "What've you tried with the core? What's wrong with it?"

"Same as what's wrong with everything else. It hit the ground hard, then got hit by those madmen." She was offering to help. These idiots obviously couldn't tell.

"Did the retropulsers snap? The synchronisers blow? What?"

"We don't need your help, _dong ma?_ " The other snapped. Kaylee raised her eyebrows.

"Was just offerin'. You change your mind, you know where I'll be." She turned to walk away. She heard one of the two behind her whispering angrily, then someone ran to catch up. The one that hadn't snapped at her.

"Hey, we don't mean to be rude. We've just had a horrible two days."

"Yeah, well, that goes for all of us." He looked past her, up at _Serenity._

"You think she'll fly again? I've lost hope for _Helios._ " He glanced back at his ship, near split in two. Kaylee nodded.

"She will. I'll fix her or I'll die trying."

* * *

 _Xiaojie:_ girl

 _Luh-suh:_ garbage

 _Dong ma:_ do you understand


	11. Chapter 11: Simon

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Simon**

Simon offered a hand to McInnerly, his scrub nurse. She smiled from behind her mask and shook it over the now closed incision site. All the bleeds stopped, the slipped ligature replaced, and no crashes. He'd take that as a win. He'd take what he could get at the moment; they were losing a lot.

"Jones?" He offered a hand to her. She hesitated. "We're closed. Sterility's over." She smiled and shook her head.

"You're covered in blood." Simon looked down at his hands.

"Not untrue. She is off gas, isn't she?"

"Yes, and up to date with pain meds."

"Okay, let's clear the decks." They had a cleaning crew on standby, and a fifteen-minute window before they started the next surgery. It was pretty relentless. The three of them wheeled their patient back in to prep, which was doubling as recovery to save staff numbers.

"Where's Ortiz?" Jones asked, attaching the patient to another gas rig.

"Wards," Colfer, a nurse on the opposite team, replied. "The peritonitises…" Simon nodded. It had been two days since the fighting. He was tired. Really tired. Overnight, some of the Reaver victims had started to develop peritonitis. Often they had no abdominal wounds, most of them had been hit by the M6 darts, but not all. Why they were now starting to develop holes in their guts was a mystery to Simon, and to Keller, and to Wesley, the other medic. Most of them had already been on Isoprovalene, but treating peritonitis was beyond what you could reasonably expect an immune stimulant to do. He'd barely passed five words with Wesley; he was in surgery right now. Someone that junior ought to have had help on hand, but there just weren't enough of them. So long as he wasn't actually killing anyone, he was doing more good than harm.

"Right, go away." McInnerly said to him. He outranked her by any system, nowhere formally let nurses overrule doctors, but this was her ship, she was probably over twice his age and she just seemed to assume she'd be listened to, so she was. In fairness, she was usually right. "Go and pick your next victim. I'll do kit." That was how this worked: you did your surgery, your next patient was ready for you, between the two, you went and decided who needed to go after the one that was already in prep. You didn't do full handovers, you didn't write up more three of four lines. It was dangerous. They were going to miss things, they were going to re-do things by mistake, but they risked people dying while they waited for surgery if they took any longer over it.

Simon de-gloved and de-gowned, washed off, changed shoes and went back in to 'wards'; most patients weren't on proper beds. He started walking, picking up charts, dismissing anyone who had already had surgery, unless they were obviously not coping. Unsurprisingly, Wesley's were over represented, which wasn't his fault. He was just very young to be put through this, he wasn't doing a bad job, some of these were horrible surgeries. Some were going to need specialist surgeons. How did you even think about closing a wound that was fifty centimetres by twenty? Simon had resorted to all sorts of stupid plasties and relief incisions, some he'd just debrided and dressed. And he'd taken limbs off, three of them, because there wasn't enough flesh left to hope they'd ever heal. He hated amputating. It felt like the opposite of his job. Maybe he should take a look at one of the unexplained peritonitises. If they were going to face a tidal wave, it wouldn't hurt to start ahead of time. The man he was approaching now was lying on his side, one hand over his eyes, hissing in pain. His chart, which was missing a name, said he'd been an M6 victim and that the bite wounds on his shoulders and arms were holding closed. They looked like they were, anyway.

"Mind if I take a look at you?"

"Go ahead." He was an older man than most on this ship. They were mostly soldiers, young men. This man was probably fifty, thin, pinched-looking. His voice was tight with pain.

"Is it your wounds that are hurting you?"

"And my guts now." Simon looked up from the man's wounds, which looked alright. Wesley had actually done very well with him. The abdominal pain was concerning. This might be turning in to another peritonitis.

"Can you lie on your back for a minute?"

"If you need me to." He rolled over, groaning in pain. His inferior abdomen was hot to the touch, and Simon barely had to touch him before he groaned or tried to move away.

"Any nausea?"

"Severe."

"Actual vomiting?"

"No."

"Okay, I have what I need." This was probably peritonitis. The man rolled back on to his side, groaning again. Simon went to put the chart back by the man's feet, but caught the black bag, which held all the patient's belongings, with his foot and sent it skidding across the floor. "Sorry." He set the chart down and went to chase it. The sleeve of a white shirt had fallen out, so had a thick latex glove with a sleeve so long the end of it was hiding inside the bag. On Alliance bases, surgery wore white gloves, medicine purple, pathology blue. Why was there a man here with gloves for handling the dead?

"Hands of Blue," Simon breathed.

"Wait," The patient said, he was staring hard at him. "you're Simon Tam." Simon jumped to his feet and ran, not thinking about where, just away, away from that man. River was terrified by the thought of them, the Hands of Blue. Something in the man's tone had been bad when he'd realised who Simon was, he'd started to sit up, in spite of the pain he was in.

Simon stumbled in to prep; he wouldn't be harmed if he was around other medics. Surely the Hands of Blue couldn't kill him in front of... Everyone was staring at him, that couldn't have looked more suspicious if he'd tried. McInnerly reacted first.

"What's got into you? Sit down, Doctor Tam." She maneuvered him to the floor. He was breathing hard. His wound was throbbing. "You were fine five minutes ago, when did this start? Everyone else, as you were; this isn't a six-man job."

"Maybe – Maybe a minute ago?" Zoe had once told him to keep as close to the truth as possible when lying. McInnerly took his wrist.

"Dizzy?"

"A little." And he was. His heart was hammering; he was still panting. It was fear, it was all fear. He could not let that man anywhere near him. Or near River. He had to have come here for River.

"I'm going to look at your wound." She didn't ask; she just told him. It was easier just to let her fuss at him. She'd do it effectively. "It looks alright to me, but, ah, Doctor Wesley, could you have a look at Doctor Tam's side?" Wesley had just emerged from theatre, pulling his mask off.

"What happened?"

"He just staggered in here like this. He was fine five minutes ago, or hiding it well."

"I was fine." Wesley laid a hand to Simon's stitches.

"Warm, not hot." He pressed until Simon flinched. "And not that painful, even given serinoids. How long have you been on your feet?"

"Ah…" Simon glanced at the clock. "Some thirteen hours?"

"You're oozing a little." Wesley showed Simon his hand. There was a tiny spot of blood. He'd probably pulled it running. "I want to call it stress and exhaustion."

"That'd be my guess. You could probably diagnose every single one of us with that." McInnerly said. "I'll find food and water for you while you go and get another patient. Keller will do it if you don't finish in time." Wesley stood up then pulled Simon to his feet.

"What do you think you're going to go for?" Wesley asked him.

"I don't know. I'd like to try one of the peritonitises, I'm worried that they might get worse fast, but going in blind for a peritonitis will probably take me longer than I can afford to spend on it." And possibly longer than it would be before he was too tired to be safe. But if the cases all had a common cause, and they found it, they could save a lot of lives.

"If you don't have one in mind, there's one of mine that went wrong, spear in the guts, that I don't think I can do any better second time round."

"Ideally we'd do it together, figure out what went wrong and how to avoid it."

"Nothing about this is ideal."

* * *

 **Ligature:** A tie around a large blood vessel, placed to stop bleeding

 **Peritonitis:** Inflammation (usually infection) of the abdominal cavity. Horrendously painful and usually fatal if untreated

 **Plasties:** Surgical techniques used to change the shape of a wound to make it easier to close by stitching

 **Relief incisions:** A way of trying to close a wound that is too big to close otherwise

 **So who do you expect to do what with this information?**


	12. Chapter 12: The Tams

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **River**

River paced _Serenity's_ upper deck, her breathing was loud in her ears, but not as loud as everything else. Zoe's screaming had quieted a bit, but it was still there. It never stopped. Neither did Mal's fear, Mal's regret, but often all she heard in his mind was The Signal, what he'd been ready to die trying to tell the 'Verse. Jayne was hurting, hurting differently, but hurting. Kaylee was fretting for the ship, for Wash, for Book, and scared for Simon. He was more in her mind now, and she was more in his. Simon was just… he was almost numb, he was so tired, but he was angry and sad. He was doing everything he could, and it still wasn't enough. That was hurting him. She'd seen what the Reavers had done to the Alliance in his mind, but now she'd seen something much scarier.

"Eight eights are sixty-four;  
"Multiply by seven.  
"When it's done,  
"Carry one,  
"And take away Eleven." She'd been trying so hard all day to block it all out, sometimes she'd even manage it for a while. But she'd seen a face in Simon's head.

"Two by Two, Hands of Blue."  
"Two by Two, Hands of Blue." She'd felt one of them die. The other one was still alive, and he'd seen Simon. Most of what she'd felt in him was pain, but she still knew. He'd kill her if he could. Or worse, take her back.

 **Simon**

Simon stood on the wards, there was nobody in sight, no medical staff anyway. Nobody who could tell… He was just out of sight of the nameless man with the blue gloves, Hands of Blue. He'd glanced at the man earlier, he was lying very still, with his eyes closed, panting. His pain had gotten worse. Nobody would think anything of it if a passing Doctor topped up his pain meds. A bottle of it was sitting in the palm of Simon's hand. He'd been using it a lot the past few days. Nobody would suspect anything if he gave the man methadone. Giving opiates to a peritonitis case would be entirely reasonable. It would be painless, even kind; let the man fall in to sedation over the next ten to twenty minutes, he wouldn't even feel it, he'd just feel the pain going away. He had an IV line for fluids, he wouldn't even feel a needlestick. Simon could back it up with hydrozepam or something to make sure the man didn't seize, probably the most painless death imaginable; far, far better than what this man inflicted on his victims, if the screaming at St. Lucy's on Ariel was any indication. He should do it. If River was right, that man had the blood of hundreds, most of them supposedly on the same side as him, on his hands. River was terrified of the Hands of Blue; she'd run screaming from them on Ariel. He'd probably kill River if he laid eyes on her, and he'd kill Simon if he could; probably the entire crew of _Serenity_ with them. It was self-defence. He should do it. He had to do it.

* * *

 **Methadone:** One of the most potent painkillers. In overdose, it causes respiratory arrest and occasionally seizures.

 **Opiates:** The class of painkillers to which methadone belongs (almost definitely what Kaylee was high on in the deleted scene of the pilot).

 **Peritonitis:** Inflammation (usually infection) of the abdominal cavity. Horrendously painful and usually fatal if untreated

 **Hydrozepam:** A drug Simon mentions in Ariel. Given it's name, I am assuming it to be a benzodiazepine, so it would make seizures less likely.

 **I am very curious to see what you make of this. Please review. I have spoken at length with a few people about this chapter, I'd like to speak to more.**


	13. Chapter 13: Kaylee

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 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **AN: I wish I could reply to non-member reviews properly, so I'm doing it here. David, having set the dilemma in the previous chapter up, I spent a lot of time discussing it with other Browncoats, we reached a unanimous decision, what Simon has or has not done will eventually become clear, please bear with me.**

 **Kaylee**

Kaylee was sitting round the back of _Serenity_ , trying to get as much of this done as she could while there was still light. The impact that had torn part of her side off had, of course, made a pretty mess of the matter inside there. The fuel line, the coolant, all the electrics… This was a moment when knowing your ship made all the difference in the 'Verse. Kaylee didn't need to trace all the wires back to their sources to know what they were, she just knew. She knew by the tension behind them, the thickness, the insulation, the heat on them… She'd done well today. It'd be a slow job, but she'd get it done. She'd taken an hour out to help the purple belly mechanics, who'd been trying to rig their smashed up comms array back to their ship, which was dumb, since they were planning to abandon ship anyway (she almost felt sorry for _Helios_ , she really did. All the gadgets they could think of, shiny new parts, just left to rust like so much junk) and they were sitting on top of probably the best communications array in the 'Verse. They'd been trying to rig their own back together rather than just hacking in to Mr. Universe's. It wasn't like he was going to mind. Stealing from the dead weren't stealing at all. It was all just going to rust otherwise.

She looked out across the moon's surface; a lone person was walking towards Serenity, a man. Simon? Looked like it. Was about the right time for him to be coming back. She should head in, there wasn't much light left anyways, clean up a little. She had business with him. She crouched down and pulled herself in to the vent shaft, which would have been a dumb way to kill herself if _Serenity_ had been anywhere near flying. The gas and the heat would kill her inside a minute, but on a grounded ship it was quicker than going round.

In the end, it was the cleaning herself up that took the time. Even with decent pumice-infused soap, engine grease could be stubborn stuff. And she did wonder if she was wasting her time; he had said he thought she was prettier when she was covered in it, but he had been pretty drunk when he'd said that. He actually beat her to his quarters, though it couldn't have been by much. She could hear him moving around behind the door before she knocked.

"Who's there?"

"It's me."

"Door's not locked." Kaylee opened the door, stepped through it and closed it behind her. She looked at him for a second; his face and hands were damp, he'd washed off, too. He looked tired, really tired. He'd changed into slacks and a T-shirt; was that what he wore to sleep? He didn't look less _shuai_ for it.

"Hey," she said, smiling. He had to guess, surely he had to. For someone so smart he could be amazingly stupid about some stuff, but surely he had to figure this one out.

"Hey, you alright?"

She smiled again. "Simon, I been fine since you reversed the dart."

"Good." He leaned back against the wall. "Some of the Alliance who were darted are developing… infections? I don't know, if they're not infections I don't know what they are, but I don't know how they can be infections, inside their abdomens. I'd almost expect that if they had wounds there, but some of them don't."

"I'm fine," Kaylee repeated.

"I'm glad," he replied. He hadn't guessed; he hadn't worked out why she'd come. She'd have to help him some.

"You know," she started, looking at the floor by his feet, head tipped sideways, "you haven't made good on your promise to me yet." She looked up again. He met her eyes for a second, then looked away.

"Kaylee, it's…" he trailed off. She waited for a second. Had he caught on yet? He pushed himself off the wall and came towards her. He stopped just in front of her, not quite looking at her face. "It's not that I don't want to," He had caught on, but he was saying no. "I just…" He held out his hands to her. She took them. They were shaking. Only very little; she hadn't been able to see it, but she could feel it. "Right now, I don't think I can." She looked up at him.

"Why not?" He made a noise like a laugh and looked down at his hands.

"I've spent twelve of the last sixteen hours in surgery, running on about six hours sleep, with a bullet hole in my side. Yesterday was the same. I'm sorry, I've got nothing left to give to you right now." Kaylee took a breath. She had him this close, she had to chance it. She grabbed him by the head, stepped up against him and kissed him. He didn't pull away. His hands came up to her neck, he leaned into her. He'd said no. She could feel her blood racing-

He pulled back, looking away, shaking his head.

"I can't do this. I mean I… I want to, but I'm not able to right now."

"You mean..?"

"Probably exactly what you think I do. I won't hold my blood pressure above-"

"Okay." That hadn't been the words in her head, but it probably meant the same thing. She wasn't exactly happy about it, but she probably shouldn't have been surprised that it was more than he could face for stamina. He stepped back. She reached a hand for the door.

"You don't have to leave." She looked back at him. "If you don't want to. It won't go anywhere but… I'd be glad of the company." He was trying to ask her to stay. In his Simon-y, backwards, cryptic, adorable way, he was trying to ask her to stay with him. She smiled.

"Okay." He turned back the blanket for her, she dropped her jacket and took off her shoes. When she went to take her bra off from under her top, he looked away.

"Simon," she started. "I came in here to have sex with you. Do you think I care if you see my bra?" He seemed to notice that that didn't make any sense.

"Force of habit?" he offered.

"What habit?"

"Clinical exams. If you need a patient to undress, you don't watch."

"Didn't come in here for a Doctor. I came in here for you."

"I know." He glanced at the clock, picked up a syringe from next to the bed and injected himself in the leg. "Painkiller." He said when he saw her watching. She came past him and got in to bed, her back to the wall. He hit the lights, then she felt the warm weight of him settle next to her. There wasn't a lot of room in these beds. She slid her arms 'round him, and he did the same. This was comfortable. Something in her wanted to push the boundaries, touch him some, see what he'd let her do, or do in return, but most of her knew that wasn't wise. He'd drawn the line, reasoned why he'd drawn it, she'd get nothing for pushing him.

oooo

Simon must have been tired. He fell asleep in a few minutes, but he didn't sleep well. Every so often, he'd twitch or half say something and seem to half wake himself up again. Twice, he woke up completely and woke her up too, once he injected himself again, and Kaylee didn't feel she'd been asleep that long before a Core-looking thing he'd left beside the bed beeped and he got up, got dressed, kissed her briefly and left.

* * *

 _Shuai:_ handsome or cute (term only applies to men, but not heavily masculate men; Eddie Redmayne, not Chris Hemsworth)

 **As ever, please review.**

 **Speed should pick up again soon, I'm on stupid shifts this week.**


	14. Chapter 14: Inara

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 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Inara**

Inara was sitting on one of the catwalks above the cargo hold, carving. The grille made it easier not to sit in dust all day. Wash's stone was sitting in the cargo hold, complete, Shepherd Book's wasn't quite half-way done. Mal had asked her to make these; there wasn't soft ground to dig graves, so this was how they'd honour their dead. She'd cried for Wash and Book, not that she'd have let anyone see, she was past weeping for now. She heard someone walking along the mezzanine behind her, she looked over her shoulder. Kaylee was coming, eyes down. She'd said she was going to approach Simon when he came back last night.

"Did you find him?" Inara asked.

"Yeah," Kaylee said.

"No joy?"

"How do you-"

"Kaylee, sweetheart, you'd have come in smiling if you'd been with him. Do you want to talk about it?" She shook her head.

"Maybe later. I haven't even looked at the drive core or the stator assembly yet." That wasn't why. Whatever the reason her pursuit hadn't been successful, she just didn't want to talk at the moment.

 **I apologise for the diminutive nature of this one. 15 will be up in a few minutes.**


	15. Chapter 15: Simon

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 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Simon**

 **WARNING: This chapter is the most gruesome in the piece. It describes the inside of a septic abdomen, and what the Reavers did to cause it. If this is likely to be a problem, just skip this chapter.**

"Doctor Tam, scrub up and get in here." Wesley's anaesthesia nurse, Khalik, stuck his head round the theatre door in to prep. Simon looked over his shoulder, two-thirds of his way through scrubbing for his own patient, feeling his mask snagging slightly and pulling on his ear.

"What's gone wrong?"

"You just need to see this." Wesley shouted.

"See or get my hands in to?"

"Hands. Don't bother with the gown though."

"Give me a minute." Khalik disappeared back in to theatre. "McInnerly," She gave him an exasperated look.

"Now I have to go and find you a second pair; you'll need to scrub again in a minute." But she offered him his gloves nevertheless.

"Okay, what?" he asked Wesley as he backed in to theatre, so he only touched the door with his back; his hands were clasped three inches in front his chest to keep them sterile. Wesley had a patient on the table, well draped, abdomen open. Khalik was looking twitchy at the patient's head, judging by the monitor, he had good reason to look twitchy.

"Get your hands in here, grab the descending colon and go distally." Wesley said. Simon reached past Wesley, the abdomen smelled foetid, yellow fibrin strands tied segments of viscera together, everything was livid red with inflammation or dark with clots. Wesley would be very lucky to save this one, and this was also what Simon was about to attempt, tracking down one of the causeless peritonitises, he only hoped his wouldn't be quite this bad. The colon was slightly sticky to the touch, it was covered in fibrin and other inflammatory debris. Simon ran his hand down, feeling the consistency of the muscle change as he went then –

"That's a rectal tear," he said.

"That's the second rectal tear I've found, on my second peritonitis of unknown aetiology. I don't think that's coincidence." Nausea rose in Simon's throat, which was a reasonable sequel to a left superior abdominal wound and a recognised side effect of Isoprovalene, but somehow this didn't feel like it had anything to do with his injuries.

"'They'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins in to their clothing. And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order.'"

Wesley looked at him as though he'd gone mad.

"What?"

"That's what the first mate on my ship told me Reavers would do to us if they boarded us. Time's proven her right; those massive flesh wounds and now this. I guess we killed them all before they got to sewing." The entire surgical crew was staring at him now.

Everything went dark. But only for a second, then all the lights came back on, almost every alarm started going off, most of them stopped almost at once.

" _Aiya! Huaile._ " Wesley said softly. "We're on battery power. That'll only hold for so long." Simon withdrew his hands from the inflamed mess of an abdomen and walked back out to prep, de-gloving as he went. McInnerly was already at the intercom.

"Surgical prep to bridge, what just happened?"

"Bridge responding, seems like power just blew. How long before you lose your backups?"

"With two theatres in use, two hours."

"Bridge to engineering, you have two hours to fix this."

"Engineering responding; requesting permission to ask the Pirate Mechanic for help. She doesn't look it, but she's good. She'll probably fix this quicker than we could." Behind his mask, Simon smiled in spite of himself. Pirate Mechanic. She might quite like that appellation.

* * *

 _Aiya Huaile!_ Oh no, or something quite similar to that.

 **Fibrin:** A protein involved in clotting. It should not form thick yellow strands, it does that when the whole clotting process is not working properly.

 **Peritonitis:** Inflammation (usually infection) of the abdominal cavity. Horrendously painful and usually fatal if untreated

 **Isoprovalene:** The immune stimulant that Simon mentions in Ariel. Simon is currently taking it because he has an abdominal wound.


	16. Chapter 16: Mal

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 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Mal**

Mal was wandering 'round the kitchen, picking stuff up. That was about all he could do at the moment, tidy up. Kaylee was running around like a dervish, and she had plenty to do, River was keeping herself out of sight, doing things like replacing smashed parts, reattaching yanked wires, Zoe was… when he could find Zoe, she was wrenching wrecked bits off _Serenity'_ s hull for the most part, and Jayne was starting to join her, one-handed, Simon was running between ships, looking sullen, presumably the Alliance had a lot of need of him. Mal had faith in his crew; they'd get _Serenity_ in the air again, eventually. He could fly her himself the while; he wouldn't do it nearly so well, he couldn't have made that landing, gliding her in like Wash had, but he could get her between worlds if he had to. He couldn't think of taking on another pilot, not yet.

"Captain Reynolds, please come in." The radio lying on the counter hadn't made a sound for days. He'd thought the Alliance Captain didn't want any more to do with him, now she had his medic to patch her wounded.

"Captain… Captain, what are you? You never gave me your name."

"Gillum. I need to talk to you. Can you walk?"

"Sure, I can walk. But I'm talking to you right now, aren't I?"

"I prefer to do business face to face, it wasn't practical before. Can you walk over to the area between our ships?" Mal hesitated.

"I can, if you don't mind the stink of dead Reavers, but I'm gonna warn you again, from what our medic is telling us, you're in a worse position to start a fight than we are." Not true. Simon wasn't saying much, but it wouldn't hang on Mal's conscience.

Captain Gillum sighed at him. "I suspect no matter how many times I tell you this, Captain, you won't believe me, but I feel no desire to harm you, your crew or what's left of your ship. I have information you are going to need."

"As you like. Give me ten minutes to get to you."

oooo

Mal was still walking slow; Simon had given him pain meds; they weren't doing enough. Captain Gillum was standing about halfway between the two ships, waiting for him, alone. She was quite a bit older than him, and that weren't a Captain's uniform. Likely everyone senior to her was dead.

"Captain," he said as he came within earshot.

"Captain," she replied. "There are a few things I have to tell you."

"I'm listening."

"First of all, thank you for making the offer. Most of my crew are dead, but I think a lot more might have died. Nobody ever said Simon Tam was a bad surgeon, and I'm grateful for your mechanic's help. Secondly, I'm trying to keep my crew alive; I'm sure you are too, so I'm sure you'll understand why I sent a distress signal." Of course she had. Purple bellies were giving up on their ship, so they needed a lift home.

"I expected as much. When are they coming?"

"In a little over a day. It's likely that they'll leave any on your crew that don't have explicit warrants alone." So everyone except Simon and River. "The Tams… present a problem."

"You aint telling me nothing I don't already know."

"It's my turn to make you an offer, Captain Reynolds."

"I'm listening."

"The girl is relatively easy. She's only been seen by ten or so of my men, all of those are pretty loyal to me, so we can put out that she was taken by those things and pulled to pieces. There are enough smashed up bits of corpse lying around the place that they shouldn't be able to tell that that's not true before it's too late. The Doctor… is problematic. He's been seen by almost all my crew, alive. I've spoken to my medics and we think we have an answer. There is a form of anaesthesia that can safely produce a coma so deep that to all but the most careful observer, the subject appears dead."

"I've heard it tell of it." Mal said; it wouldn't pay to show his hand, or tell her they'd used it before. "I'll believe it's safe when my medic says so."

"That's fair. Anyway, that's my offer. For what you and yours have done for me, Tam and your mechanic… where did she train?"

Mal laughed. "She ain't trained."

"Yet she managed to set up our distress beacon in an hour. My men had been trying for days. I can't pay for your people's time in credits, I can pay you in food, supplies… What if we were to say whatever you can pack in to five standard size four crates." Good deal, so long as she kept her word, unless they had almost nothing of any value left. Of course, you never take a deal at face value, you always protest and quibble 'fore you close.

"Five crates, huh. What do you recon a good surgeon makes on Osiris per day, and working overtime? And you've had… six hours of my mechanic's time?"

"If we've obviously been cleaned out, the other crew will look more closely at our supplies lists. Five crates is what I think I can get away with." And she was willing to haggle, so she probably intended to pay up.

oooo

"Hey, doc." Mal stuck his head in to the room he'd been told he'd find his Doctor in. He wasn't in there. The room was full of people laying still, one of them muttering, and a bunch of people dressed in white. "Where's my medic?" He asked the room.

"You the pirate?" One of the people dressed in white asked.

"Now that's unkind."

"You run one hell of a skilled crew, I'll give you that. I don't know how many of ours your medic's saved, now we've got your mechanic holding _Helios_ together, too. Tam's there." She pointed through a second door. Mal started towards it. The woman grabbed his arm. "No you don't. That's theatre. You're dirty. Tam!" She shouted, pushing the door ajar with her foot. "There's a pirate here looking for you."

"Give me a minute to close up. What do you want? I'm not dying for another hour."

"Tell you when you're out."

It didn't take him that long, Simon came out pushing a motionless man with a tube down his throat and a long line of stitches down his belly, even longer than the one in Mal.

"I've done my best with that," he said to one of the white-dressed folks, stripping of gloves that were red with blood. "but I don't think it's all out. The stitches are intentionally weak because I think someone is going to have to do it again soon enough. Watch his blood pressure. Captain?"

"This Captain owes us. She said drugs are fair game, you know what to take. You got one standard size four crate to fill."

"Shame there are no serinoids left." A white-haired woman who'd followed Simon out said. "That might have been fair payment for what you've done for us." She stripped off a pair of bloody gloves and offered a hand to Simon, who shook it. "It's been a privilege to work with you, even in conditions like these."

"And to you. I'd forgotten how good scrub nurses were. I've been on my own for too long."

"And we can't tempt you to come back to civilisation with us?"

"McInnerly, you know what I'm about to have to do to get away." The old woman grimaced. "All the patients are out, aren't they?" Nobody protested.

"Right then," She said. "We're staging a collapse, just like in school. We'll stage a code in forty." She gestured at Simon, who lowered himself to the floor.

"Doctor Tam?" Somebody else started.

"Doctor Tam," McInnerly grabbed his arm. "can you hear me? Look at me." This was a strange thing to watch. Simon just lay on the floor, two other people fussing round him, checking vitals, Simon telling them their findings – which he was presumably making up – somebody shouting for another Doctor, who in return shouted that he was in surgery. They stuck something in Simon's arm, then got him on to a stretcher and started carrying him out.

"Follow us." Simon said to Mal as they started to move him.

"Shut up, you're a collapse patient." One of the people carrying the stretcher said. This was getting past strange. They carried Simon through another door, into an empty corridor, then put him down.

"End staged collapse." the white haired woman said. Simon stood up as though this was all completely normal. Maybe on the Core it was. "Any notes on the drill?"

"Your assessment of mentation dropped off," Simon said. "Other than that I think it was all right."

"So we stage a crash here in forty minutes. You know where pharmacy is, don't you?" Simon nodded. The four who'd carried him out said goodbye to him briefly, then went back to work.

"Is that normal where you're from?" Mal asked when the door closed behind them.

"Up to a point. Training hospitals will run drills like that to teach people what to do if someone collapses, here it's more so that everyone tells the same story if they're asked how I died."

"Feds only hear one lie…"

"Exactly. They'll run a crash drill with me so that there's a common account of attempts at resusc."

"We applied the cortical electrodes but we were unable to get a neural reaction?"

"Something like that. Cortical electrodes actually wouldn't be very appropriate given I'm supposed to die of vasodilatory shock."

"Right, anyway, get the meds."

* * *

 **Serinoids:** A fictional class of painkillers.

 **Mentation:** How conscious somebody is and the quality of their consciousness (delirium, hallucination...)

 **Resusc:** Resusciatation

 **Cortical electrodes:** I have no idea. Whedon made them up. Presumably they're supposed to make the brain behave normally by creating a seizure-like potential and sort of re-setting it, which makes very poor biological sense.

 **Vasodilatory shock:** Overwhelming inflammation or infection which causes most of the body's tissues to demand far more blood than normal, with the result that not enough is left to keep vital organs functioning. Quite often fatal


	17. Chapter 17: Simon

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 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Simon**

"I'm calling it." Wesley said, standing up. "Leave him, McInnerly, he's gone." The nurses started so step back, heads bowed. Ortiz cursed quietly. People usually didn't get that into drills in med school. "This must have been brewing quietly for days. We just loaded him so high with pain meds he couldn't feel it, or he was slipping himself epi. Let's get him out of here." Simon rolled over and got to his feet, since there was nobody else here to see him get up. Only medics and _Serentiy's_ crew could see him conscious now, this was his listed time of death. The Captain had taken the meds he'd picked out, all that remained was for them to leave the Alliance ship unobserved, Wesley to knock him out and teach someone how to revive him. Given that this time he had to be 'dead' for some hours, it would be a harder job than it had been on Ariel. "Come on." Wesley said quietly, starting to make for the hole in the ship they could climb out of and make for the improvised morgue, just a shaded pit in the ground that stayed fairly cold. "How are you feeling?"

"Well, for someone who's now officially dead..."

"You're not worried about…"

"It's Beta-hydroxyldetomidate. It's an anaesthetic. And at the end of the day I'd rather take my chances with that than with the Alliance justice system."

"What, you don't think the hydrozepam is making you irrationally chilled?"

"Not impossible."

oooo

'Someone from _Serentiy's_ crew' had been the plan. 'Someone from _Serenity's_ crew' had been supposed to come to the morgue to make sure they knew the reversal protocol. More like half of what was left of Serenity's crew had turned up. Mal, one hand over his gun, Zoe, armed, but not reaching for a weapon, and Kaylee, fidgeting, arms folded, hair tied away from her face, she looked prettier like that. It showed the line of her neck in to her shoulder, the smoothness of it. He knew what that part of her felt like. If the plan worked, he might manage to pursue her more fully in a few hours. She probably wouldn't even pretend to run. She'd made her position on the matter very clear.

"Leave it," he told himself. Anything inclined to push his sympathetic tone up at all would make the next fifteen minutes more uncomfortable than they needed to be.

"All according to plan?" Mal asked.

"Yep," Wesley said. He dropped his bag off his shoulder. "First thing, your medic is going to draw up, so you can't accuse me of trying to poison him."

"Doc, any way he could abuse that?" Mal asked.

"No, not on these meds. Bottles are engraved on the Core so nobody can swap labels." He knelt down and set about drawing up. He'd done his math ahead of time.

"I'd advise you to double draw up the reversal agents and give them to two different people, people who won't lose them or drop them or whatever." Wesley said. Simon nodded and picked up a bottle of doxopram to start. He heard movement behind him.

" _Shen sheng de gao_ _wan_ ," Mal started. "I told you to hide! You turn around right now and get under cover."

"I won't." River's voice. Simon looked round.

"River-" What was she doing here? Mal was right, she was supposed to hide. He probably shouldn't have used her name.

"I'm not going."

"You're not safe here, you know that. You need to get away."

"I'm not going," she repeated. "And you're not going to drag me."

"They'll kill you if they find you," Mal said.

"I'm not going." She had that stiffness to her posture and her voice that had always, since she'd been about three, meant she wasn't going to move except by brute force. But unlike when she was three, Simon wasn't confident he'd win a fight with her, in fact, he was confident he'd lose. Hopefully she'd have the sense to hide herself well before the reinforcements turned up. He went back to drawing up the drugs.

"So this is her," Wesley said quietly. "This is River Tam, so dangerous we aren't even allowed to talk to her."

"Watch the broadcast," Mal said. "That's what they were scared she'd say."

"I'm not staying," River said. "I just need to look at him." She pointed at Wesley without looking at him. "I need to be sure." Wesley was looking at her warily. "No," River said, turning to him. "I'm not." A moment, then "No, you didn't. Yes, I did. I still am." Wesley's jaw dropped slightly. She smiled. "I know." Mal laughed.

"The girl reads minds." River stood directly in front of Wesley and stared in to his face for almost a minute, then

"He's safe. He doesn't want them to take him."

"That why you were down here, Little Albatross?" Mal asked. River nodded. "Then maybe I'll skip getting mad at you if you go and hide right now." River smiled. She threw her arms round Simon's neck, almost knocking him over.

"See you in a few hours."

"I'm fine, _mei mei,_ it's just going to sleep."

"No, it's not. It's severe vasoconstriction causing reflex bradycardia and bradypnoea resulting in a proto-comatose state."

"Okay, that's true, but it's controlled. It reverses." River nodded. "Take these." Simon handed her two capped syringes. If she could hide herself from the Feds, she could hide these. River turned them in her hands.

"Pulmonary stimulator, doxopram. Adrenaline, cardiac infuser, and atipamezole." And she was right, as usual.

"Now get out of here," Mal told her again; this time she obeyed, running off into the night.

"Okay…" Wesley said slowly. "This is one strange crew."

"That ain't a word of a lie," Mal said. "Now get on with it; teach us what to do with him once you're gone, and knock him out." Wesley drew a breath slowly.

"Right, do any of you have any sort of first aid training at all?" Kaylee and Mal shook their heads.

"Nothing beyond sense and battlefield experience," Mal said.

"I learned some," Zoe said. "Wouldn't trust myself to do much."

"CPR?" Wesley asked.

"Could never make it work for real."

"That's probably not your fault." Simon said. "Most of those we start CPR on are hopeless cases, even if you have drugs or electrics to back it up."

"Those under Beta-hydroxyldetomidate are the exception." Wesley said. "They come back. If you've ever done chest compressions, you're our best shot here, so you're going to take the other reversal agents." Simon handed her the other syringes.

"You use the smaller one first. Take the whole needle section off and put it under my tongue."

"Then the IV component, the big one." Wesley said. "We've put catheters in so you don't have to go looking for veins in someone with no blood pressure." Simon pulled up his left sleeve. "There's one there, we think the other ship might take that one, so there's another one in his right ankle. Fortunately McInnerly can actually place those ones, I hate them. If you have a choice, use the one in his arm." Zoe was looking a little worried.

"It isn't difficult," Simon offered, showing her the end of the catheter. "You see the black circle in the centre there? Stick the needle straight through that, empty the syringe, take the syringe back out. That's it."

"If you just do that," Wesley continued, "he will wake up eventually. If he's been out under an hour, you definitely don't need to do any more, but we're not expecting the other ship for nearly that long, so chest compressions will help. Don't try to do the breaths, he won't need it. Just compressions until he gasps, it should be under a minute. Can you just show us on a corpse what you think of as chest compressions?" Zoe hesitated. "They're dead, they don't care." Zoe walked slowly towards the lines of bodies. She didn't want to, but she didn't want to refuse, either. She knelt down beside the nearest one. Wesley pulled back the sheet and exposed the man's chest. Zoe locked her hands and started. Rigor mortis hadn't set in that far yet; his chest still sprung back. Simon crouched behind her and pulled her elbows straight.

"You get more force if you just use your shoulders."

"I feel like I'm going to do damage if-"

"You should. If I'm not bruised by the end of it, you were doing something wrong. That's better." CPR was intrinsically brutal. If he was lucky, she wouldn't wrench his stitches trying to bring him back. This was going to be a very unpleasant ten minutes, but if it kept him out of Alliance hands, it had to be worth it.

"You keep that up until he gasps," Wesley repeated, "then you do the bit that Doctors get wrong." Zoe frowned at him. Simon felt himself smile. This was why he didn't use this anaesthetic.

"That's not encouraging," she said. Wesley smiled.

"You do nothing. You sit on your hands and you leave him alone."

"This recovery doesn't look nice," Simon said. "But it isn't actually painful." Just very, very uncomfortable. "It's just a rude shock. The mistake Doctors make is to try to smooth it out. That always makes it worse."

"You just have to let him gasp." Wesley said. "It could go on for five- maybe ten minutes, but it will end. Eventually he'll re-oxygenate properly. If you can get him to lie on his right side, so much the better, but it doesn't matter much. He's going to get very cold, but don't try to warm him before the drugs are in, even then, don't try to do it too fast. Nothing to eat or drink until he can stand up, walk in a straight line and talk sense." Zoe nodded mutely. "Now tell that back to me."

* * *

 _Shen sheng de gao wan:_ Holy testicle Tuesday (or so I'm told)

 _Mei mei:_ Sister

 **'Epi':** Epinephrine. Another name for adrenaline. Would suppress the symptoms of what Simon supposedly died of, but only for so long.

 **Beta-hydroxyldetomidate:** An anaesthetic which, in high enough doses, causes a coma so profound the patient appears dead. Whedon doesn't give this drug a name when Simon uses it in Ariel, so I've given it a name which is similar to the name of a real drug (detomidate) which in some ways very similar. I know this is a different name to the name of the drug Tracey uses in The Message; I think they're different drugs.

 **Hydrozepam:** A sedative. Simon took a low dose to make himself easier to knock out.

 **Sympathetic tone:** In this context, the effects of a branch of the unconscious nervous system. Sympathetic tone is elevated in extreme fear, extreme anger, acute pain and the earlier phases of sexual arousal. It also makes some sedatives (such as the drugs I am assuming beta-hydroxyldetomidate to be like) less effective.

 **Doxopram:** A respiratory (pulmonary) stimulant. This is actually real.

 **Vasoconstriction:** Narrowing of blood vessels

 **Bradycardia** : Abnormally slow heart beat

 **Bradypnoea** : Abnormally slow breathing

 **Atipamezole** : A drug used to reverse the effects of detomidate, so I am using it to reverse beta-hydroxyldetomidate

 **As ever, please review.**


	18. Chapter 18: Kaylee

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Kaylee**

Kaylee knew she should try to take it in, in case Zoe forgot bits or something. By the time Zoe had repeated the whole lot back to Simon and the purple belly Doctor twice, she thought she had it.

"It's actually quite difficult to mess this up," Simon said to Zoe after the second run. "Just hold your nerve once I'm breathing."

"You ready for this?" The purple belly asked. Simon nodded. He glanced 'round at her, Zoe and Mal.

"See you on the other side." He looked sort of… determined, like he knew he had to do this, but by the look on his face he really, really didn't want to. Was this really the best they could come up with? He sat down next to the rows of the dead and lay back. He almost seemed to be forcing himself to breathe slowly. The other medic crouched down next to him.

"I just wanted to say thank you. I think we'd have lost a lot more if you hadn't helped us."

"It's okay. It's what we're for, and Keller helped me first. Now get on with it." The purple belly pulled Simon's sleeve up and stuck a syringe in to the port-thing.

"Okay, count back from twenty."

"Twenty?"

"This isn't Alsalol."

"Fine." He started counting slowly. Until about fourteen, he sounded completely normal, then he started repeating himself, as though he was forgetting what he'd just said. Did it feel bad? Did it scare him to feel himself losing control like that? He got stuck at nine, he might have tried to say something else, then stopped talking. He took a couple of heaves of breath, then nothing. Nothing at all. He didn't move, he wasn't breathing. The purple belly put a stethoscope to his chest. For a minute, nobody moved, then the purple belly shone a light in Simon's eye.

"Fixed and dilated." He said. "That ought to fool almost anyone. And no agonal gasp. I think we're clear."

* * *

 **Alsalol:** A fast-acting, short-acting anaesthetic, based on propofol.

 **Agonal gasp:** A deep, involuntary gasp associated with cardiac arrest. In specific circumstances, might happen in a dead patient.

 **Micro-chapter, hence posted with 17.**


	19. Chapter 19: Mal

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Mal**

Mal sat in the hold with Zoe, Inara, Jayne and Kaylee. River was hiding somewhere (she'd managed to convince them all she'd melted in into Serenity before now, she could hide well enough), Simon was in the morgue. Nobody wanted to speak, nobody wanted to move. They could all hear the Alliance rescue cruiser landing. Zoe could probably see its lights from where she was; it wasn't quite dawn yet. They'd hidden their pay off-ship; the Alliance would probably feel the need to re-ransack Serenity. They didn't seem to feel they'd done their day's work unless they'd turned out every box and cupboard on somebody else's ship.

"Jayne," Mal said after five minutes of sitting and waiting. "Take a scope, stick your head out, see what you can see." Jayne huffed, but did as he was told.

"They're on the ground, some from both ships."

"Where are they headed?" Mal asked

"Between ships, I think."

"Right," Mal said. "Zoe, come with me. Let's make sure Gillum keeps her word." Simon was about all they could easily steal. Everything else was hidden well. Kaylee got up and made to follow them. "No," Mal said to her. "You stay here." Kaylee shook her head. Why was she acting out like this? He knew full well she was sweet on the Doctor, but she'd gotten… clingy since... since the fight.

"I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not. You're the best _gorram_ mechanic I've ever seen, but you're no liar. We give the Feds any reason to believe the Doctor ain't dead, it's over." She didn't look like backing down.

"Kaylee," Inara started. Mal wasn't always grateful when she opened her mouth. "you don't need to do that to yourself. He'll be alright." Kaylee looked down, then sat back down. Maybe this time Mal had reason to be grateful.

"If they want to search the ship, don't try to stop them. They won't find anything here they'll want."

Zoe slowed up for him, he still wasn't walking quickly. They went unarmed, wasn't like they'd have a hope against that many Feds anyway, better to give them less reason to start something. They waited probably an hour before anybody came near them in the crater full of bodies, which were starting to smell. He'd smelled worse plenty of times before in the war; he doubted he'd ever smell anything as bad as a half a million dead in Serenity Valley again, but it still wasn't pleasant. When Gillum came, she came with a man who was wearing a proper Alliance Captain's uniform and looked a long way less tired than she did.

"… So the Pirate crew had both Tams."

"Apparently. But you heard the Operative, they've done their damage."

"Bodies?"

"Like I said, one here, we never found the girl. Quite a few bodies are in bits, what's left of her will be somewhere in that mess."

"These must be the pirates." The new Captain gestured to Mal and Zoe. Neither replied.

"Simon Tam's here if you want to see him," Mal said, looking down at Simon, who certainly looked pretty dead. The other Captain walked up to Simon and kicked him in the shoulder.

"Enough," Mal said firmly. "Have a little respect for the dead. He died helping yours, though he knew you wouldn't be good to him. This is the last time I let my crew help Feds. I gave you a Doctor, you gave me back a corpse." The Captain huffed and turned to Gillum.

"Get me a Doctor."

"It's a little late for that," Zoe said coldly. Gillum did as she was told. Mal guessed she didn't have a choice.

"Lots of dead here," the other Captain said. "How many was your crew to start with?"

"A hundred, plus fifty soldiers."

"How many have you lost?"

"Sixty-nine bodies here, twenty-two missing, presumed dead."

"Ninety-one of a hundred and fifty; that's atrocious!" It was atrocious, but Serenity Valley had been much, much worse; he supposed this was their bird coming home to roost at last. Alliance had made the Reavers, now they'd lost probably thousands of men and women to them. But how many tens or even hundreds of thousands of civilians, of settlers had Reavers killed over the years? Then there were all those that had died on Miranda. Alliance still deserved to lose a lot more to Reavers. "You will be called up to explain yourself on Londinium, you know that."

"Yessir. Though I ought to make it clear, I am only Captain because both officers senior to me were killed."

Two armoured men were chivvying a woman towards them. When they came closer, Mal recognised the woman, the Doctor who'd turned up on _Serenity_ to give him blood and stitch Simon and Jayne up.

"Captain Li, this is Doctor Keller, our most senior active medic." Gillum said.

"Please keep it brief, sir, I have living patients to see to," she said coldly.

"I am giving you a direct order; I won't take that tone from you. Who declared this man dead?" He nudged Simon with his foot again.

"Doctor Wesley, the other one who was on shift when it happened."

"Do you know how he died?"

"Most of it. I assessed him and stitched him up days ago, other medical staff have told me the details of what happened later."

"So what was the cause of death?"

"Septic shock, following a gunshot wound to the abdomen." She showed the man the stitches in Simon's side.

"That doesn't look too septic to me."

"That's not where the infection came from. Judging by the symptoms we saw, the shot wound perforated his gut and I didn't realise when I stitched it. If I were to cut him open he'd look septic, from the outside the wound doesn't look too bad."

"How long has this man been dead?"

Keller glanced at her watch. "Two and a half hours? He's already going cold."

"Were attempts made to resuscitate him?"

"Of course we tried. We tried for fifteen minutes. Wesley loaded him with cardiac infusers and epi to try and get his core perfused. They tried defibrillation, he flatlined but didn't respond to the drugs."

"What about the cortical…. The cortical things. I've heard my medics call for them."

"Cortical electrodes would be entirely useless on a vasodilatory shock patient. You would never get a neural reaction."

"If you say so. I'll check with my medics later. Please examine Simon Tam."

"What?" Keller asked.

"Please examine Simon Tam."

"He's dead. There are still dozens of people I'm trying to help."

"You may go back to them when you've completed an examination of Simon Tam." Keller turned to Simon with a face that would sour milk. She pulled one of his eyes open and shone a light in to it. "Pupils fixed and dilated, so no midbrain function, so no heartbeat." She laid a hand to his neck. "And no jugular pulse." She laid a stethoscope to his chest. "No heartbeat. I declare this man dead on examination." She made to get up.

"No, you stay there two full minutes, listening. There are people who want him alive."

" _Wo de ma!_ He isn't alive!" Keller shouted. "He's quite plainly dead. There are people who are still alive on our ship, but some of them only just. I'm needed up there."

"That was not a request, Doctor." Keller knelt down beside Simon and put her stethoscope back on him.

"This is pointless," she said. Li didn't even answer her.

"Now the girl. Who last saw her alive?"

"That'd be us," Zoe said. "We were holing ourselves in behind a blast door, she didn't make it through in time. Reavers took her. We heard her screaming." That was what they'd agreed was the story.

"What are Reavers?"

"Those crazed men." Gillum said. "It's what they call them."

"Her body?"

"Never found it." Mal said. "Man, woman or child gets taken by Reavers, there aint much left to find." Li lifted his radio.

"Search team Beta, perform a sweep of the area for any torso or head that might belong to a female of seventeen years and is not positively identified, and take DNA samples." He turned to Mal. "Where is your ship?" Mal pointed. "Search team Gamma, search the Firefly class for contraband and fugitives." Hopefully they wouldn't find anything. The 'contraband' was well hidden and well away from the ship, and finding River… well, good luck with that. "How many on your crew?"

"Five left alive." Zoe said.

"Where are the other three?"

"On the ship." Mal said.

"Will they give us any trouble?"

"They shouldn't."

"Any of them got warrants?"

"Not that I know of, now the Tams are dead," Mal said flatly. Keller stood up.

"No one can go that long without a heartbeat and be alive. I am telling you categorically, this man is dead." The new Captain turned to a couple of his grunts.

"Get him on to the ship."

"No." Mal stepped over Simon, arms folded. "She told us we could keep his body."

"I did," Gillum said. "Captain Reynolds agreed to lend me his medic, the man died on my watch, I thought it was the least I could do."

"Simon Tam is a fugitive-"

"Simon Tam is a corpse," Keller put in, starting to walk away.

"You are not dismissed, Doctor. Simon Tam is a fugitive from the Alliance and as such needs to be positively identified." Mal stared hard at Gillum. This was getting a little too interesting.

"DNA is acceptable," Gillum said. "He has two living parents and his own DNA on the Core database. He saved a lot of lives on our side. His parents formally disowned him; they won't want his body back. Let me keep my word as a Captain." The other Captain huffed.

"Fine. But if we find the girl's body, we're taking that. Doctor, get a DNA sample from this one." Keller knelt down again and cut a tiny piece of skin from behind Simon's ear – he didn't even bleed – put it in a pot and offered Mal her hand.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know what he did, but-" She threw her arms round Mal's neck and hugged him. "Two heartbeats while I was listening." She breathed in to his ear before he could pull away. "He's fine." She let go of him and stepped back. "You keep off heavy work for another week." She said at normal volume. "Wounds like yours turn bad easily. You're all going to have to be more careful now you've lost him." She gestured at Simon.

"We coped well enough before, daresay we'll cope well enough after. Can we take him now?" Mal asked. Gillum nodded.

"Go ahead."

* * *

 _Wo de ma:_ A moderately strong curse.

 **Septic shock:** A type of vasodilatory shock. Overwhelming infection which causes most of the body's tissues to demand far more blood than normal, with the result that not enough is left to keep vital organs functioning. Quite often fatal

 **Cardiac infusers:** Whedonese. He probably means drugs that aim to make the heart beat harder or more effectively.

' **Epi':** Epinepherine, another name for adrenaline.

 **Defibrillation:** Using an electric shock to try to make a heart stop fibrillating (what heart muscle does instead of spasming) in the hope that it will flatline, then restart.

 **Flatlined:** Ceased to have any detectable electrical activity in the heart at all. In this situation, defibrillation is useless.

 **Vasodilatory shock:** Overwhelming inflammation or infection which causes most of the body's tissues to demand far more blood than normal, with the result that not enough is left to keep vital organs functioning. Quite often fatal


	20. Chapter 20: Inara

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Inara**

Inara sat down on a piece of debris that didn't look too sharp and dusted her hands off. Kaylee was sitting on the ground nearby, knees drawn in to her chest, staring hard at her own feet. Inara could almost feel her trying not to look at Simon, who was laid out a bit further away, covered by a blanket. Mal, Zoe and Jayne were standing around, waiting for the Alliance men to come back off _Serenity_. They'd probably make a mess of everything, just as they had done last time. They waited maybe half an hour before the ten armoured men filed back off the ship.

"May we clean up after you?" Inara asked. For a government to teach its men to search was fair, but they might teach them to leave what they'd searched tidy. They ignored her and spoke to Mal.

"Your paperwork is out of date, but no contraband found, or any piece of that girl, but seven slept-in beds for a crew of five."

"Doctor was alive to sleep in his last night, and when your ship's this smashed it's nobody's priority to make a dead girl's bed up nice." Mal said matter-of-factly. The armoured man turned and walked away. Mal stood and watched him go, then "Right, everyone back on board. Let's see about cleaning up their mess."

It wasn't actually too bad in most of the ship. They'd opened every cupboard and container, but hadn't actually emptied them out. Inara's things were more or less undisturbed. She supposed they'd been looking for a person, a person could only hide in so small a space, but they had missed some of Mal's secret compartments. These were less zealous Feds than some they'd encountered. Mal was still walking badly; he wouldn't ask Simon to look at him, though she kept telling him to. He seemed to think it was a mark of weakness to acknowledge pain. The idiot had been stabbed clean through; of course it hurt, but he was just too stubborn to ask for help. Inara went about the common areas, cleaning up for what felt like an hour or two, then started back towards the hold. She had two or three hours work left to do on Mr. Universe's stone. Wash's and Book's were done. She took up her tools, knelt down, laid the point chisel to the stone and stopped. Bare feet were approaching from outside, she looked up. River's head appeared 'round the door.

"River, sweetheart, are you sure you're safe to be here?" River nodded.

"They're all back on board. The mice can play."

"Hey." Mal's voice from beneath. "You're supposed to be hiding. What am I supposed to say to your brother if he wakes up and they've got you?"

"They won't. They're taking off."

"Then why can't I hear-" The deep, distant thrum of a bigger ship's engine sounded. "Okay. They're taking off. You want to be useful, go find Zoe." River darted off in to the bowels of the ship. Mal leaned against the wall, then seemed to notice her and stood up again. "I'm going to be very glad when we can call this over."

"We all are, Mal." She set her tools to the stone again. "We all are."

 **Very short, so posted with chapter 19**


	21. Chapter 21: Kaylee

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Kaylee**

"And down," Zoe said. Kaylee lowered her corner of the blanket until she couldn't feel Simon's weight in it any more, then she, Zoe, River and Jayne straightened up. Zoe hadn't let Mal help, saying that until Simon was standing and talking sense, Mal wasn't to risk his stitches. River offered two syringes to Zoe, the two Simon had given her hours earlier. Zoe pulled out hers. "I still got mine, Little Albatross." River lowered hers.

"It's okay," River said quietly. Presumably, she was answering somebody's thought. Kaylee didn't know if that would ever stop being weird. Zoe sighed heavily.

"Right, let's try this." She crouched down next to Simon and shifted him so he was flatter on his back. He was completely limp. He was paler than he had been right after he'd been shot, almost grey, he looked really, really dead. Zoe pulled his mouth open and emptied the smaller syringe in there. Mal, Inara and Jayne were standing about above, not near each other, just watching. Kaylee backed up a pace. She wouldn't be any use, this was Zoe's job. She fixed ships, not people. Zoe pulled up Simon's sleeve and shoved the second drug in to the port-thing.

"Chest," River said. "Go." Zoe took a deep breath, locked her hands over Simon's chest and started. Surely that had to hurt him, but he'd said it should. River picked up his wrist. Kaylee's put her hands over her mouth. "No, this is right. He's going to wake up."

It went on and on and on, Zoe pounding on Simon's chest, hissing with effort. He wasn't going to wake up. Something had gone wrong, and he wasn't going to wake up. It felt like Zoe had been at it for minutes. That had to be too long.

Suddenly he gasped and jerked like he'd had an electric shock. Zoe jumped back, River didn't seem to startle at all. Kaylee released a breath she hadn't noticed she'd been holding. He was alive. He was breathing. It wasn't pretty, he was gasping and choking for air, he'd make himself sick if he kept on, but he was alive. He was struggling against nothing, as though he thought something was trying to hold him down. Zoe pushed him up on to his side.

"Now you stay there, Doc. Just stay there."

"We're waking up now, Simon. It's okay. Two-twenty and falling," River said. Whether he was awake enough to understand, Kaylee wasn't sure. He was still gasping like he was stuck in an engine vent. River looked up at her. "He hasn't breathed in hours."

"How long's this supposed to take?" Zoe asked. "He doesn't look good."

"I don't know," River said. "But both Doctors knew this would happen, and he was only scared of it because it hurts." It looked like it hurt. Kaylee crept closer again and knelt down on the floor beside River. Simon didn't really seem to see them. He'd stopped thrashing about now, he was just lying there, gasping, though maybe a little less now. "One-eighty-seven and falling."

"He told us to do nothing," Zoe said. "So I guess he thinks he'll come out of it on his own." His breathing was slowing down. River shushed him and stroked the side of his head.

"Dead men tell no tales. They're gone."

"River?" Simon managed between gasps, after a minute.

"Yeah. It's okay, one-sixty-four and falling."

"They gone?"

"The mice can play."

"She means yes," Zoe added. "Good to have you back with us, Doc." He didn't answer. He rolled on to his front and made a go of getting to his hands and knees, but slipped. Zoe caught him. "Might be better if you stay put a minute, you think?" He nodded. River took his wrist again.

"One-thirty-three and falling."

"You taking his pulse?" Zoe asked. "That what the numbers were?" River nodded.

"Adrenaline and hypercapnia." Simon said. "'ll wear off."

"And just you stay still until it does," Zoe said firmly. Kaylee took his other hand. He met her eyes, he might have tried to smile, but just breathing seemed to be taking up a lot of effort for him right now.

* * *

 **Hypercapnia:** Too much carbon dioxide in the blood, which causes an increased need to breathe. Simon hasn't breathed properly for hours, so he hasn't been getting rid of carbon dioxide, so now he's gasping.


	22. Chapter 22: River

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **River**

His thoughts sounded like his thoughts now, they were forming, using words, he was nearly properly awake, but still breathing very hard. Now Zoe was concentrating less, her screaming was coming back some. Kaylee was less afraid; she was glad he seemed to be okay, all of them were. But Kaylee's strangeness about Simon was coming back too. It had grown a lot in the past few days because she'd let it. River let Simon lie for a minute, then asked him:

"What's sixteen squared?"

"Two hundred and fifty-six." It took him four and a half seconds. He used to be quicker than that.

"What's Verucose triad?"

"Abnormal flow, abnormal coagulability, abnormal surface." Three seconds, reasonable speed. Having to take a breath in the middle slowed him down.

"Why did the elephant paint his feet yellow?"

"What?"

"Answer the question."

"What sort of a question is that?"

"You used to know the answer." It was in his brain somewhere, just buried under quite a lot of stuff. It was seven seconds before he even tried to answer aloud.

"Was it… was it something to do with camouflage?" Very, very slow. So slow she'd lost count.

"What was the first question I asked you?"

"Sixteen squared." One second. Good speed.

"When's my birthday?"

"July 17th." One second. Good speed. And she'd heard something in his brain about day being a vestigial mode of time measurement, in her voice. So he was working well enough to remember that, almost verbatim, but still breathing abnormally.

"What are you doing?" Mal asked. Wasn't it obvious?

"I'm checking to make sure his brains are working. They got cold, now they're warming up again."

"And are they?"

"For him. One-thirty-seven, still falling." They could be working better, but Simon's brains never worked all that well. Nobody's did. He was cold and he was thirsty. She got up and went to get him another blanket and some water. Nobody else had realised. He'd been lying on the ground with no perfusion for hours and nobody had realised he was cold. The only reason he wasn't shivering yet was that his brain probably hadn't caught up.

He was shivering a bit by the time she got back, and sitting up against a crate. She dropped the blanket on his head to watch how he moved, within normal limits, and put the water out of his reach. Kaylee was sitting next to him, her strangeness was getting louder, Simon's was starting to answer it. Zoe was standing near, nobody else had moved significantly.

"'Fore anyone goes," Mal said. "We do right by our dead, our real dead, at sundown. Cliff top above and to the east." East was a vestigial concept, too; this moon didn't have a magnetic core. River had her own thing she'd made, it wasn't like Inara's. But it meant something to her. "We all got our own work to be doing." Mal turned and started to walk away. Inara thought about going after him; something to do with pain, something to do with a knife, but she didn't. She went back to her tools. Jayne was already going.

"You okay from here?" Zoe asked Simon, who nodded.

"I should be. Those recoveries look worse than they are."

"Good." She walked away, her screaming was getting loud again. River shook her head. Simon was cold. She ducked under the blanket and curled up against him under his arm.

"What's this about, _mei mei?_ "

"You're hypothermic."

"Got you there, if I were hypothermic, I wouldn't shiver. I'm cold, I'm not hypothermic."

"Hypothermic, too little heat. Greek. They're synonyms."

"No they're not. Hypothermia is the state in which the hypothalamus stops trying."

"Hypothermia. Too little heat."

"There's no point in arguing with you, is there?"

"No." She shifted herself slightly. The edge of guilt she'd felt in his brain a couple of days ago had got quieter. When she'd sat and listened carefully to it – which had been difficult, there had been a lot of noise in his brain – she hadn't been able to find anything he'd done. Just something he'd thought. "Simon, the Hands of Blue." Saying it made him uncomfortable. But not the way it had made her uncomfortable, it wasn't fear anymore. He looked down.

"He's dead, _mei mei._ "

"I know. Both of them are. I just wanted to say that…" She hesitated. Sometimes going from thoughts to words was difficult. "That I'm glad you didn't. Because you're you and you don't do that. If you'd done it you would have had to change and I don't want you to change." He looked up at her, then away again. His thoughts about this were mixed up. He was angry with himself for backing away, he was scared that it had even crossed his mind. But in the end it hadn't mattered. Infection had killed him. Simon could stay innocent.

He warmed up slowly, over half an hour, and none of them said much aloud. Simon's arms and legs hurt because they hadn't had blood and now they had it again. He was rubbing his wrists, but his hands didn't work well at first. Kaylee knew she had work to do, but her strangeness about Simon wouldn't let her leave and do it. Simon's brain was working better as he warmed up. Eventually he remembered to pull his catheters and reach for the water. His heart rate and breathing rate stopped falling, and his strangeness towards Kaylee got louder, until River heard something clear enough to be words in his head.

" _This would be easier if River weren't here,_ " she heard in his brain. If she wasn't wanted, she had her own things to be doing. She had a thing to finish. Maybe it was better to let their strangenesses answer each other. She got up and walked away.

* * *

 _Mei mei:_ Sister

 **Hypothalamus:** The part of the brain that keeps several things in the body stable, including temperature.

 **As you've probably gathered, the end is drawing near. If you'd like to tell me what you think of how the Hands of Blue problem resolved itself, I'd very much like to hear. David, I'm looking at you. Also, does anybody know why the elephant painted his feet yellow?**


	23. Chapter 23: Simon

**.**

 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Simon**

Simon watched River go silently. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered trying to explain her behaviour. Had she just decided he was warm enough? Had something distracted her? Had she gathered what he meant to attempt from his mind? That wasn't a particularly comfortable thought, but what could he do about it? Probably nothing, and it wasn't just his mind she could read. Simon drew his knees up and got to his feet. His proprioception seemed to be working and his head didn't spin, so his blood pressure was within normal limits and responsive to demand. He was fine. He was still riding the previous Serinoid dose, so his side didn't even hurt yet. If he was bruised from the chest compressions he couldn't feel that yet either. Kaylee'd stood up with him. She was looking up at him, breathing slightly fast. She'd wanted to a few days ago, but he couldn't presume on that. What could he say to her to-

Kaylee grabbed him by the neck and kissed him, pushing him back half a pace. Okay, that was unambiguous. He settled one arm against her back and leaned into her.

"You up for this?" She asked as they broke apart. He nodded.

"Certainly going to try." She smiled.

"My bunk or yours?"

"Can we use yours? River walks into mine unannounced." Kaylee smiled. Her breathing had picked up further, and so had his. His heart rate was increasing, too, and it felt good. Kaylee took him by the hand – her hands were warm - and started to lead him off. It was actually going to happen. It had only taken him however many months and the real and imminent threat of death to get his act together.

"Hang on." He let go of her hand and turned in to the infirmary. If the Alliance had searched the ship, they'd left this part of it tidy. Kaylee was a pace behind him.

"What for?"

"Let's not take risks we don't need to take." He opened a drawer, pushed a box of number 11 blades aside and picked up a small sealed packet. The thin polymer ring inside it bent slightly in his hand.

"How long have you had those?" Kaylee asked. Simon felt himself colour slightly.

"Three days."

"So where did..?"

"I stole them. Sort of. The Alliance realised decades ago that banning on-ship relationships doesn't work, not on crews of a hundred or more, so now they provide these. I didn't know they were going to pay me, I started to think I might actually survive, so I started hiding them. We gave up keeping stock of most restricted meds, I doubted anyone would notice." Kaylee had started laughing.

"Look at you. We'll make a petty thief of you yet. Come on." She took him by the hand again and led him away.

* * *

 **Proprioception:** Sense of where your limbs are


	24. Chapter 24: Kaylee

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 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Kaylee**

Kaylee lay on her side, one hand under her head, the other resting on Simon's shoulder. Both of his hands were on her waist, his thumbs were running lightly over her skin. She could still feel him in other places, some bits of her didn't seem to want to forget what he felt like too quickly. She hadn't really known what to expect from him. He was _shuai,_ sure, but in terms of how he'd handle himself, and her, she'd had no idea, really. Apart from being a bit slow (she'd been trying to bring him on quite a bit, at his pace they might have been hours, but she supposed that was less annoying than a man who raced ahead), he'd been good, he really knew what to do with his hands, you had to give him that. And he'd been… whatever the opposite of grabby was. He'd held her, he still was holding her, but he hadn't clung on like he was afraid she'd run away. She ran a hand down towards his hips. He tensed as she got near the stitches in his side.

"That hurt?" she asked, pulling her hand back.

"Not as much as I thought it would." He poked himself experimentally an inch from the wound. "Not yet, anyway. It's starting to. Meds are wearing off." Kaylee could sympathise with that. It had to feel kind of similar to the hole Dobson had put in her, Simon had kept her pretty spaced out for a fair while, but it had hurt a lot when she'd come back.

"Figures. I remember that." His eyes flicked down.

"Yours was a worse wound. By a long way."

"I think I was more out of it than you were, you were trying to fix the rest of us for hours."

"I did give you quite a lot of methadone, that probably had more to do with it than the wounds themselves." He ran a hand across her belly. She arched into him a little. "Where is it?"

"What?"

"The scar from that; I can't find it now. I was sure it was xiphoid-ish midline."

"There aint one, not much of one anyway. You did your job." He smiled. "Yours'll go."

"I'd be more confident in that if I'd actually taken my own advice and rested."

"Well you can rest now." He sighed heavily.

"Yeah, I should probably check the Captain soon and-" He noticed the way she was looking at him.

"You need to learn to stop," she said firmly. He smiled like he'd been caught doing something he knew he shouldn't have been doing.

"You're not the first person to tell me that."

"No kidding. Who else?"

"My mother, a lot of teachers, Estelle, River now and then, which was rich coming from her, various clinical tutors, most supervisors I ever had…" Kaylee thought about asking who Estelle was, but it would probably sound a bit strange right now. "I haven't, yet."

"People can change. I guess you've done a lot of stuff in the past year you never dreamed you'd do; I have."

"Like what?"

"Ah… Built a thing that actually flew, out of junk, that was fun, pulled a Crazy Ivan with a newly-stitched hole in my guts, hacked in to a flying garbage dumpster while standing on an airborne ship, got run in to a corner by a Reaver pack and lived. Sure as hell didn't expect to do that, certainly not the 'living' part."

"That makes two of us." A shadow crossed Simon's face.

"What?"

"What they did to some of the Alliance…" He shook his head. "It beggars belief. I've seen some pretty horrendous injuries, that goes with being a trauma surgeon, but the state some of those were in…" Kaylee pulled him closer and kissed the side of his head.

* * *

 _Shuai:_ Handsome or cute, term only applies to men.

 **Methadone:** A powerful painkiller, tends to make patients quite high.

 **Xiphoid:** The end of the breastbone (sternum) or the area of the abdomen nearest it.


	25. Chapter 25: Mal - Epilogue

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 **.**

 **Strange Bedfellows**

 **Mal**

Mal stood at the top of the outcrop, the sun and the stones to his left; they didn't have enough of a body left to do fair by Book, and they couldn't bury in bare stone, Inara's three carvings and River's… whatever that thing was called, were the best they could do. He'd had a crew of nine not so long ago, there were only six that stood here, alive: himself, Jayne, silent and still, Inara, composed to the last, Kaylee, not looking at anyone, Simon, leaning on Kaylee and a crutch River had found somewhere, and River, kneeling in the dust, tying things to her memorial. Zoe was coming, walking up the rock towards them, slow, sad and proud; a warrior woman, with flaming sticks of incense burning in her hands.

She'd lived through Serenity, she'd live through this.

She'd survive.

The price for the signal had been paid in blood; their blood, Alliance blood and an awful lot of innocent blood.

But it had had to be done. It had needed to be said. Something like that couldn't be left a secret.

And they were alive, seven of them still, they had supplies to last them easily two months, maybe three. They had hands and parts to fix the ship.

Maybe, just maybe, they'd survive.

Maybe the worst of this was over now.

Fin

* * *

 **Here ends Strange Bedfellows.**

 **Thank you all for coming with me this far. If you haven't yet, do please review. If I'm asked, there are more Firefly plots in my head that I could expand on; I'd like to watch River over the next few months, and see what kind of mess Serenity's crew has dropped the Alliance in.**

 **An author called ladlebasking has also written an exploration of this period of the canon, with very different assumptions and a rather different result. I enjoyed it.**

 **Thanks to Gamera Obscura, my tireless beta who fixes my stupid punctuation and keeps my medic-ing in check, to a certain young lady called Kay, who introduced me to Malcom Reynolds and his peculiar band of associates, and sat with me watching Serenity for the first time, to my Grandmother, for always encouraging me to write, to my brother, for learning to plot and imagine with me, to a certain young man called William, for sitting with me in a cafe and arguing about many things to do with Firefly, including whether Simon could ever kill a patient and to God for creating the world and everything in it, and for being willing to die to save me. Solo Dei Gloria.**


End file.
